White's Electronics,

I got a call from my usual detecting buddy the other day wanting to head out and try our new White’s TDI machines to get some experience with them before heading to an organized hunt in Virginia. We've hunted very hard the few spots we have near Gettysburg with our White’s V3i machines, with each return trip yielding fewer finds. We had hoped as well that the new machines would give us a new perspective on the fields that we had pounded before.

On this trip as many before we invited a friend of ours to tag along. When we got to our hunt location, we geared up and crossed the brush row into the field. Much to our delight, we found the field had been cut short where before it had fairly high grass with many small bushes scattered about. Not today though, we were free to swing over every inch of the field. The other two split, one left and one right, and worked up through the field. I headed straight up the center. After about ten minutes with each of us digging a few nails, I was getting some idea of how nails sounded with the TDI compared to what a "good" target sounded like.

Of course before heading to the field I had run the machine many times over the items in my test garden at home. A few more steps and one more swing and I got a completely solid sounding signal. My guess was that if anything it would be a bullet as that is all we had pulled from that field on previous trips. I pinpointed the target and dug my plug, flipping it back with my spade. As I stood and checked the hole finding the target slightly deeper, I look up to see my hunting partners walking toward me chatting.

I put down my equipment and stood up to join in the conversation. Of course, as is often the case, I got a "Find anything" to which I replied "a few nails." They acknowledged the same finds. I told them I did have a good signal in the hole and bent back down to see what lay waiting in the hole. I pulled out my White’s Bullseye pinpointer and quickly found the target in the center and only an inch or so down. I pushed my fingers in and started to pull out what I at first thought was the end to a large spoon. I then realized it was much too thick and turned it over to see the letters "US" looking at me.

I looked up with astonishment to see my two hunting partners with what I'm guessing was the same look on their face. I had just found my first US civil war box plate in fairly decent condition! With shaking hands I brushed some of the dirt free and then handed it to my friends. I find it difficult to believe that we had missed the box plate before with the V3i units, so we're assuming the better cut job they did on the field opened up the possibility of finding this now rare find here in Gettysburg. We continued to hunt the area for the next couple hours and were able to find a total of 3 gardner bullets, a sharps bullet, an eagle button and one 1943 silver quarter.

Lesson learned from this? NEVER consider a spot hunted out. Take a new approach and a new machine, White’s of course...and you may be surprised with what you find!!

Derek (PA)