This past weekend I traveled to Kansas for business and a couple of seeded hunts at a local football field.

The turnout was great and a fun time was had by all! The seeded hunts were a learning experience for me because I had never done a seeded hunt before and I did most things wrong! I used too high sensitivity, I detected outside the seeded area for a time, and I took great care filling my plugs, all of which hindered my chances at finding very many of the seeded targets.

When the seeded hunt was over I had NO planted targets! I wasn’t the only one, because we later found out that about half of the planted coins were not found during the seeded hunts!

Armed with that knowledge, after the hunt I borrowed my friend Jerry’s Etrac metal detector with the large coil and went back to the field where over 20 detectorists had run various machines and set-ups.

Can I just say that I LOVE the Minelab e-Trac!? I was hitting 8-9 inch quarters consistently! Many of which made me ask “How did they not hit on THIS?” while getting beautiful, clear tones on these targets. (I didn’t realize the other detectorists were skipping the deeper targets that were not seeded)

I ended up with many deep coins using the e-Trac… when I got a pretty sounding and shallow target. Digging down about 3 inches, I saw it in the plug, some sort of red coin, maybe a penny…

Yes, it was a penny, an 1893 Indian Head Penny! 122 year old coin, and my oldest coin ever, and also my first Indian Head Penny! That coin made my entire DAY! Up until that point I had been having an average day of clad and junk finds, so I was STOKED to find an Indian to cap off a great day of detecting with good friends and a great turn out for the event.

I didn’t care that it was a seeded coin, I didn’t go home empty handed and my reputation was saved…LOL

I can still call myself a detectorist! HAHAHA