Treasure Hunting Forum

A friend of mine recently bought 15 acres just behind Confederate lines in north Vicksburg, and was nice enough to invite me along to hunt with him. As of yesterday we have made three sojourns into this exceedingly hilly and vine-ridden jungle with only a few minie balls to show for our efforts. I knew [...]

Unable to hunt a site where I just know I’m going to dig some big artillery shells, I instead cruised one of the older streets in Vicksburg, looking for a vacant lot that might offer up a coin or two. I was lucky. The City of Vicksburg has been condemning and razing old houses in [...]

A while back I was hunting a creek that runs through the old extinct town of Warrenton, Mississippi. So much garbage has been dumped upstream by modern dwellers and driven downstream by the currents, however, that I couldn’t hunt for all the “trash” signals. So I settled for an area near the stream that I [...]

I have heard some detectorists say that they can “super-tune” their detectors by fine tuning them, then (I think) running the null or threshhold signal to maximum. I’d like to hear from anyone who has experience with such, or who has other tricks for “super-tuning” their detector.

I don’t know why they’re called coin shooters, those hardy souls who search playgrounds and beaches for silver, diamonds, gold, and, if nothing else, clads. But the moniker appeared, and it stuck. Metal detectors have evolved to the point that their tiny LED screens can indicate not only depth, but the type of coin you’ve found. [...]

As any digger of Civil War artifacts can tell you, iron relics of that struggle come out of the ground with a good coating of rust. Different diggers have different methods for cleaning the artifacts, but the generally accepted most effective method is electrolysis. This procedure requires a container in which the artifact (the cathode) rests submerged [...]

During this past year’s dry summer the gages of our local rivers – the Mississippi, the Big Black, and the Yazoo – read fairly low levels. Since the beds of all our rivers and oceans are home to TRILLIONS of dollars in treasure, I couldn’t resist temptation. No, I didn’t dive for it this time. [...]

I made another trip into the hills of Vicksburg with the Nautilus DMC-IIB metal detector, and once again had to come out of the woods after less than an hour. The performance of the machine is fine, but with the 15” head, the weight is hard to deal with. I dug several deep signals, nothing [...]

A while back a lady friend of mine called to ask if I wanted to hunt a nearby Vicksburg creek. I told her I was too busy to go, but I wished her luck. Little did I realize what an opportunity I missed. Within an hour she came by my place with her various Civil [...]

I’ve tried many different types of metal detectors, from White to Fisher to Garrett to many I can’t even remember the manufacturer of. Right now I’m trying out the Nautilus detector, the DMC-IIB. I’ve found that setup of the detector is a complex process – I’ve had to take the manual with me to the [...]