Is Beach Detecting Just Easier?

[mn90403]

As many of you know, I live at the beach, Santa Monica to be exact.  I detect the beach often.  I oftentimes hear faint signals and dig deep holes for coins, trash and jewelry.  I can dig much deeper for targets on a beach than I do in the desert.  I can read a beach, slow down and grid it and find stuff others miss with an 800, 3030 or even my 5000.

I've trained with several detectorists over the years in order to improve my efficiency in the nugget game but I'd have to say I don't have the confidence after all of these years that I'm doing it right.  The recent JP thread once again emphasizes coil control and settings as a way to hear the little nuggets and deep ones.  It is still a technique I'm unable to master.  Are the signals just that much more subtle in the nugget game?

I've found hundreds of nuggets over the last 10 years and a couple of big ones but I'm far from efficient.  Let me put it this way, if you were to take me and a group of other detectorists out to a nugget patch and make teams (I would be picked near last) or let everyone take a shot at a location and then you would follow, I would be picked nearly first (expecting I would miss more than others)!  

Each time I'm in the desert I enjoy it even when I don't get nuggets but I have to do a better job of putting myself where the gold and the coil meet.  No doubt a better understanding of geology would help but I can't make myself look at topography or geology maps.

Is that it?

Mitchel

[flakmagnet]

Firstly I have been detecting on beaches since the late 70's. I began gold detecting in the early 80's. For me, beach detecting is actually a lot easier than detecting for gold. I will bet everyone who as been around a new gold prospector and you have them take a listen to what a subtle target sounds like, they say "That is what it sounds like?" At least that has been my experience. 

Want to be clear, this is not trying to come off like some sort of expert here. You can tell from my questions on the forum that I am learning all the time. I have seen you hunt on the beach and you know your stuff. You move quite a bit more quickly than I do but I don't really think that makes too much difference, it's kind of a matter of style and I can tell, you like to move. And, you find all kinds of cool stuff, you know from experience how to read a beach and where to look. I have never hunted in the desert with you but from your descriptions you seem to do things right. Do you move at the same rate you do at the beach? I doubt it, but thought I'd ask. 

In all honesty I think it's simply a matter of time. You go to lots of good spots, I know you've found lots of gold, so maybe it's just some sort of weird dry spell…we all have them (don't we?).

Best...

[GB_Amateur]

Here's a thought to ponder: where did the gold contained in the jewelry you find on the beach originate?  It's a zero sum game and the direction of movement is only one-way.

 

[fredmason]

I think beach hunting lends itself to your style of hunting. You know the indicators at beach, and you go to those same beaches often.

Gold hunting is  way different!  Your jack rabbit style does not work well in worked out patches, in my opinion.

you don’t know what you miss beaching hunting....but, you could mark some beach that you detected, then hunt it as slowly and carefully as if nugget hunting, dig every thing....I will bet you are missing the faint stuff at the beach too.

Not a perfect comparison but it may help...

on the  other hand, who am I?

fred 

[klunker]

Well, let me do a little comparative analysis to see if we can definitely answer mn's query. 

 A beach is rather flat. My country is rather straight up and downuallar,

A beach is nice smooth sand. I work in hard bedrock and boulders.

A beach has no White Thorn brush or Manzanita to fight through.

A beach lacks disgusting things like Rattlesnakes, Mountain Lions, Bears and the U.S.F.S to deal with.

A beach might have several lightly attired ladies for pleasant distraction. All I get is Sourdough Scott.

A beach has jewelry made by man. My mountains have jewelry made by God.

Yes. a beach is easier but I'll stay in my mountains.

[Steve Herschbach]

Yes, beach hunting is easier in multiple ways.

I can only offer a general observation. Most people I have detected with are not nearly as patient as I am. They cover ground far faster, and if they do not see gold after a few hours or a day, want to go to an entirely new location.

I do the basic research. Let's say there are a half dozen patches in reach that I am familiar with. I find that if I am with someone they want to hit them all. A few hours here, and then it's "let's go there."

I subscribe to an old rule. Don't leave gold to find gold. If I know the place I am on has produced gold, and in general I have no reason to think the other places are any better (that's why I went to this one) then I do not like moving. It wastes time, and it wastes money in the form of fuel if nothing else. I like spending days and often an entire week in one location.

How in the world can I spend so much time in one spot? Because I am methodical. I always hunt in a careful pattern with a GPS. My goal is to hunt any 10 square feet so well on the first pass that I never have to hunt it again (though I often do ). I work slowly and carefully around every obstruction, and move loose items aside. My coil control is my best tool. I may not tune up perfectly but I do keep the coil under complete control at all times. If anyone was to ask me why I am doing better than somebody else, it's methodical hunting and coil control, not magic settings. I do also have an ear for whisper signals, what I call imaginary signals. The ones where I go a foot or two before my brain says "was that a signal?" and back up and check. Even then I'm often not sure, but removing some material then let's me know, yup, that was a signal.

I hunt patches that have been considered worked out by others and do pretty well on them. I have one patch I've hunted methodically with my GPS for several years now, and there are still gaps in my master GPS map that I need to go fill in. Once the core is filled I extend the perimeters quite a way beyond the last nugget. I don't mind hunting outward from the perimeter for a day and finding no gold. From my perspective it just needs to be done. I GPS mark every nugget so I can follow and extend any trend I see, plus rehunt areas where I found concentrations with a different detector or coil. The bottom line is that when you hunt like this, even a small patch can keep a person like me busy for a long time before I'm willing to give up on it entirely.

Fred mentioned jack rabbits. That is how most detectorists do appear from my perspective. No patience, moving too fast, poor coil control, getting bored and wanting to hop locations quite regularly. It is why I prefer to hunt alone, as I tend to accommodate other people, but that then has me not doing what I really want to do.... stay put. For me an ideal detecting scenario is one week on one location.

My on the radar sites with the most potential are probably the ones I like hunting the least, the ones that are full of trash. My theory on patches is that they are not hunted as long as one signal remains. That means I have to dig up every target, and I do mean every bit of trash, not matter how tiny. But it just wears me out. So for those places I have to use the old saying about how you eat an elephant - one bite at a time. I just have to keep going back and digging trash until it wears me out, then go back again sometime in the future. Any bit of trash can be a nugget that reads like trash, or which is masking a nugget. The most gold left out there right now is probably in the trashiest locations. A mixed blessing if there ever was one.

[principedeleon]

I believe metal detecting is something you want to do what your closest to being that beach , parks or mountains for nugget hunting. 

Nugget hunting is veryy tough if you dont know exactlly where to be looking.. 

I just find nugget hunting very difficult just cause of the fact how large and shallow the gold needs to be. Where you might be walking over the gold in a lots occasion. 

The size of gold and geology helps some prospectors around the world while the chances of others being veryy low..  

 

[flakmagnet]

1 hour ago, Steve Herschbach said:

It is why I prefer to hunt alone, as I tend to accommodate other people, but that then has me not doing what I really want to do.... stay put.

I agree heartily with your post Steve - no surprise there I guess. It's just the way I have seen the detectorists that I admire, work. Low and Slow is not just a saying it's a gold hunting technique that produces results.  As a counterpoint I would like to add a short story that illustrates a jack rabbit approach that paid off big-time. This was recounted by a good friend; He was hunting in the motherlode with a friend of his, let's call him Joe. My friend is methodical and organized. His friend, Joe , disappeared into the brushy distance in the first five minutes of their hunt, waving his coil like a semaphore flag. Half an hour later, my friend was on his hands and knees and sweating profusely as he wrestled with some virtually impenetrable manzanita growth trying to open up an area where he could slide his coil into an undetected space. He straightened up when Joe appeared beside him. "What are you doing in there?" Joe asked, "That's the same place you were working last time we were here. Doesn't look like any fun to me." and for emphasis he shoved his coil into the brush about a foot away  from where my friend had been struggling and instantly got a booming signal. The quarter ounce nugget was the biggest of the day by far. My friend still shakes his head in wonderment every time he tells the story.

[mn90403]

Ok, ok ... I didn't know the beach would bring out the best in your gold detectorists!  Very good responses I'd say from just a 'throw out' subject.  haha

I think I can hear the threshold breaks and iffys easier on the beach than on the other surfaces I hunt.  All of the really small targets have been ground down to fines so only scoop size targets remain ... sometimes at depth. 

It must be the mineralization I can't handle.  I don't tune the threshold to a similar fine edge of natural nugget vs ground noise except the obvious and shallow ones.  The equipment I'm using can find tiny stuff as you've seen from little wires, lead and bullet flakes but the tiny nugget bump is something that often escapes me.

Perhaps I just need to realize that a nugget location has too many signals (mineralizations) for most coils and detectors to handle because it varies so much.  Gravel that holds gold is certainly not beach sand.

 

[2Valen]

3 hours ago, Steve Herschbach said:

I may not tune up perfectly but I do keep the coil under complete control at all times. If anyone was to ask me why I am doing better than somebody else, it's methodical hunting and coil control, not magic settings.

I will have to do this more often as I  am guilty of not being as patient as I should be.

I am on this forum to learn as much as I can to improve my skills and learn my new 800.

Time will tell if I can master the tools I have, both equipment and person.