Yet again it is Monday and I have nothing to do but to Metaldetect. After a quick pit-stop at the shop to fill up on fruits,water and some food for the trip, I sped off towards the capitulation site in the warm autumn weather. I started searching around the kitchen area I found before the weekend. There was many signals but the ones I got to dig today was only rubbish and rust, and one of the pits was completely empty except for a smashed zink bucket. The next dumping pit was full,, but only broken glass and worthless rust. 

As soon as I got a litte warm from the digging  the gnats showed up. Swarms of them, and they all wanted to hang around on my eyes,nose and even wanted to go into my mouth. It became a real challenge keeping the sanity the next few hours. I tried putting on my sunglasses but the gnats still managed to crawl under them and get to my eyes. Having driven so far to dig here I just had to try keep my kool and continue searching and try to ignore the bugs. Well at home now I have placed my mossie net in the bag for tomorrow.
 I went over to the ditch wanting to find more of the dog tags, I went over the area twice, once with the All Metal mode and once with the discrimination turned up to ignore iron and rust. There were a few good signals, but mostly it was trash. On one spot though I found the small "corner" of the broken up disc I had found two weeks ago and was very happy with that find.

After the two sweeps across the ditch I am now pretty certain there is no alu signals to pick up, but there is still the 1,5 x 1,5 meter square dumping pit in the end of the ditch. The gnats was messing with my head so I didn`t want to start the pit today so I moved randomly around the forest for the rest of the day. Located a small dumping pit again and several signals spread around, but nothing good. I had kept at it for 5-6 hours and when I decided to stop and return home I ran through the forest to the car to get away from the crazy little biters flying around my head. So,tomorrow I ll bring the mossie net:)

The weather report for this weekend is not looking good so I made sure to make a little trip into a forest. It is a well trawled place not far from where I live as I didn`t have time to drive to the capitulation site today. I didn`t bring the detector,only the pinpointer, because there is a ditch in this forest I started digging last year. I found the spot quickly and decided for how large a section I was going to clear. The ditch is about a meter deep so I opened up a bit more than half a meter lenght. I didn`t find anything else than broken bottles,complete bottles,a few hundred food tins and boxes rusted more or less all the way back to atoms the first half meter down into the ditch. When the more solid metal bits started to pop out there wasn`t really anything exciting, a few tools, a hammer, a few stripper clips and a few k98 casings and a lid of some sort. A large root went along the edge of the ditch and on top of it I spotted a small corner of a thin metal bit, I didn`t dare to hope for it,but as I cleared off some more soil I saw it was a Stalag/POW ID tag. A great little find. There was a bottle which seemed to have grown into the root, and I decided to chop of the root and bring it home, but as I removed all the soil the bottle came loose as it had just been lying next to the root. The last thing I found of any interest was a small glass, looks like a shot glass, marked with Zenith.

I had a small break from digging this weekend, but back in business this morning. I spent half the day at the capitulation site continuing clearing the dog-tag ditch. Now I have collected all the metal on the surface to one spot and spent a few hours checking the area and digging signals. It was far between the good stuff today, but now and again there was a great signal with great stuff, like three more ID tags and a spork in decent condition.  Next time I ll go here I ll also begin with searching around the ditch and in it for more tags, then I will start digging the dumping pit in the end of the ditch. Hopefully the last dog tags will be in there somewhere.

After some hours I drifted away from the ditch area to see if I could find any other "relic-clusters" like it. In one area I came across some building foundations and here could be some more stuff! I dug some signals here and apart from metal chimneys, roofing and sheet metal I found a few spots which might be dumping pits. I took another direction into the forest and went a long time with not one single signal. I was now on the oposite side again of the ditch a few hundred meters deeper into the forest. Here I saw a oven made up of concrete and bricks, could be the kitchen area most likely, and around it I found several dumping pits and signals everywhere between them. It was late in the afternoon now and I had to get back home for some dinner, it would become dark quite soon anyway, but now I know where to dig more next time;)

The weekend is upon us and its time for digging, even though I have been doing that almost all week. I made a few hours searching on the capitulation site. The weather was a bit hot and the gnats were swarming, trying to make me loose it. I did my best to ignore the small biters and focus on the signals the Fisher kept giving me. Within the first hour I found two more of the dog tags, and kept on trying to find more of the same signals. There was a few but it was only bits and pieces of no interest.

Behind a fallen tree I had another "dog-tag signal" which sort of turned into a mixed large signal. Off with the backpack and starting removing moss and roots. Then there was a layer of rocks and I had to get them all out, the shovel was useless for this so I pryed the rocks loose with my bayonet. Now I started to see metal and lots of it. Here was some interesting old stuff, some of it in bad condition but some of the things was rather nice looking. A meter long enamelled scoop, probably for a field kitchen came out of there, zink dishes and small glass jars, a few boot soles and heel irons and some cutlery and forks. There was also a couple of canteens there but they was of steel and rusted to bits. In one corner things had a greenish hue to it so there had to be some brass stuff there. Removing some more rocks and I could feel some round shapes which loosened when I tried to pull it. Out came a large brass tube thing with a handle on top, it was marked with a white painted "6". Next items to see daylight again was also of brass. Three smaller tubes which looked to have a screw cap on one end. One of the tubes had a leather strap, and I realised they were for dogs. The strap was the collar, and the tubes was to put written messages inside. So for army dogs, a super interesting find. I will clean them up and I hope there still is a message inside. High hopes.

After yesterdays mishap with the detector I had to find out if it was broken or not, so I was early out of bed and into the forest. I went to the site with the signal flare pit. Here I knew a few spots and exactly what signal the detector should be giving, not too far from home either in case it wouldn`t work. When I approached the ditch with all the signal flares I turned on the Fisher and crossed my fingers. A few sweeps later it looked to work as it should, so I could relax again. I have dug a few meters of this ditch earlier but since I was here I started opening a new section of it to see if there could be anything else than flares down there.

Thightly packed with flares. It took a while to reach the bottom of the ditch and when I did it was nothing else to find other than the hundreds of flares already dug out. I collected a few nice ones and filled back the hole. I then noticed that right next to me was a large bear dropping, and it didn`t look very old. I didn`t go all Bear Grylls and stick my finger in it to check if it was still warm, just gathered my stuff, had a good scan of the surrounding area and moved on.

The next hours I didn`t find much metals at all. Only a few rounds of .45 and some nails before I had a great signal again. It was a massive brass signal and I was correct with my guess that it would be a crate of ammo. I have found several of these scattered around this area earlier. I dug it up just to get a few pics of it and to see if there was something under it, but it was nothing else there. The ammo was from 1917 and for the Krag Joergensen rifle. All in all it was a nice day with no surprising finds and most important the detector is working as it should. I guess it went mental from the combo of batteries and wet forest.

Today the rain that had been over us the last days had stopped. I was not slow to get out of the house and into the forest. I was eager to see what more I could find on the capitulation site. As usual I dug every signal as I moved towards the site where all the dogtags was found. I can easily see which routes I have walked here earlier as there is small piles of rust here and there and some relics around tree trunks, so I sort of have a marked grid for a systematic search. The amount of signals given by the detector is only comparable to heavily fought on frontline positions, just less cool stuff here..annoyingly many bits of wire and nails made of good quality metals is growing under the moss here.

Around the dog-tag place I searched well and long for any more of the alu discs but I only found 1 and 3/4 of them. In the middle of this spot is a several meter long and wide ditch with mixed signals all over and bits and pieces lying visible on the forest floor, I have a theory that somewhere between all this metal is more dog tags, but it will be one heck of a job clearing it. While I took a break and ate alittle I made a plan. I ll start by clearing one end of the ditch, then move all metal I find to the cleared spot as I progress towards the other end...next time, for the rest of the day I decided to do some more random searching in other sections of the forest.

After a while of moving around digging signals it was all of the sudden silent from the detector. No signals anywhere. I took another direction, but still nothing. As my boot got stuck in a piece of barbed wire I noticed the detector was touching the wire but gave no sound, something was wrong with it. I checked the batteries, the wiring, the adjustments,turned it off and on again but nothing, there was no visible damage to it either. This really pissed me off. What would I do without one, just before the end of the season. I was boiling. I went back to the car and there I checked it again, but still nothing. I had a couple of fresh batteries in the car, and tried those as a last resort, even though the display showed lots of battery life left on the ones I took out. Mysteriously enough the detector seemed to work normal again now all of the sudden and it was like a ton of bricks lifting of my shoulders. Will give it another go again tomorrow and hopefully it will work as normal.

This morning I was ready to go to the forest early. I had to continue where I stopped on monday. I went straight to the spot and began a systematic search. All the tags from yesterday was found in this area of the forest, scattered around within a ca 200 x 200 meter large area so I hoped to find a few more. I spent nearly 5 hours searching and digging and I dug every signal that was more complex than pure iron signals, so to map out any dumping pits to dig later. 

One of the signals which turned out to be a dumping pit and I had to empty it. It was full of leather pieces with buckles, clasps and D-rings. Everyting was cut to pieces but it looked like it had been parts of horse harness, Y-straps and some ammo pouches, too bad it had been destroyed coz most of it seemed to have been preserved well.

Next to the leather pit was a rotten canteen of German origin, the blade of a butter knife and a mystery part. This was also in the middle of a ant-highway so I had to dig fast.

At this point I started to get bored of digging rusted things and I had located a few dumping pits for another day, So I made some adjustments to the Fisher F5 and discriminated away all iron and scrap metal and strolled around between the trees  looking for good metal. It wasn`t long before the detector gave off a nice clean beep and showed some good numbers on the display. I tore away the moss and the small roots under it and felt the metal, I scraped away some soil and saw the rounded edge of a thin piece of metal, a dog tag!!

A meter away I had another clean strong signal and was 100% sure it was another tag. I found a rounded thin edge and dragged it out from under the roots, but it was not a dog tag, it was just another mystery piece. I stuck it in the rucksack, fought a few mossies and continued searching. My next find was a cup of some sort, it will be interesting to clean it and see if there is any engravings or stampings on it.

The next couple of hours I kept on with the systematic search and had great results. A few more dumping pits located, some junk and six more dog tags!! The sun was heating up quite a bit and I moved out of the "dog-tag area" towards the car, porch and some beer. I am sure there is much more kool stuff to find here so I will be back soon. I might check out a couple of other sites the next few days before I go back searching for more tags though.
Keep Smiling and stay muddy :)