Hunting wooded areas is plain hard, simply because it is difficult to get the coil close to the ground. If there was a home site there many years ago it is now grown over with underbrush and high weeds. Need I say more?

Yes, there is more: Most old, deteriorated homesteads have metal debris laying around such as pieces of tin roofing, nails, and wire, widely used at the turn of the century. If it was a farm homestead, there will also be bits and pieces of iron everywhere from machinery.

Hunting wooded sites takes patience and skills not used on ordinary sites. A rigid piece of plexi glass for instance, can be helpful to flatten the underbrush and weeds. It will allow you to swing the coil closer to the ground without resistance. Dragging a lawn mower to the site is not always practical.

Knowing where to swing the coil is everything. The privies and cellar holes are obvious places if you can find them, but do not forget the front porch and breezeways between buildings. These are where social gatherings took place with family members and friends, especially in the hot summer months. Sure, they are difficult to locate when the structures are no longer there, but with a little common sense they can be visualized by locating building corner stones and porchstep foundations. Most early homes built in North America were made of wood and elevated off the ground by pillars made of rock. In later years the supports were made of concrete or cement blocks. Fireplace bricks also help locate past building structures.

If the home site was a farm, there will be remnants of fencing. Bobbed wire goes back over two-hundred years and can be found in bits and pieces often grown over with vegetation, sometimes even absorbed in tree bark.

If a fenceline can be detected, follow it and you will often locate other building sites. The site giveaway is a sudden change in vegetation. Lilacs were commonly planted around outhouses to curb the odor. It is not difficult to distinguish natural wooded growth with unnatural growth. Barns and other structures were located some ways from the main house.

One location often overlooked is the well. Some of the best finds have come from wells, though, there are different techniques required to recover the goodies. Sometimes it is easy as the well in its last years, was filled with trash to the top because an electric pump with a pipe was more practical and replaced it. Trash? Yes, one-hundred to two-hundred-year-old trash can yield some highly prized finds.

Some good places to hunt anywhere on any site, whether it be in the woods or in the city, are under the very old and large trees. Somewhere in time, someone has sat under those trees and if you are lucky, you will find coins and other goodies from more than one generation. The east and west sides of the trees will yield the most, simply because this is where over the years, they provided the most shade.

Winter hunting (without snow) is more advantageous than summer hunting in the woods because the vegetation has died back. In the south, the irritating, biting insects are far less. Common sense would dictate winter hunting over summer hunting hands down, especially in the south.

Don't forget paths people traveled between buildings at old home sites. Though they might not be visible now, they are easily revealed by logic, such as with, "as the crow flies." The paths between buildings will usually be the most direct routes between them. Some good finds have been recovered in paths between buildings of turn-of the-century sites.

Here's another tip: Ask all the questions you can about the site from the owner of the land. Often he can lead you to some prime locations on the site, even sometimes lead you to an elder who once lived on the property. You would be surprised at how eager they are willing to give information.