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Interesting Hunt Conditions And Another Lesson Learned


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On 11/19/2020 at 2:03 PM, Johnny Crunch said:

I'm closely following the various settings adjustments, and your result reports, as someday soon I hope to afford a Nox 800... I agree: 'Where are the damn coins?'

Glad to read replies, some containing advice, some showing appreciation, or just showing that you're reading.  I'm often not sure if my posts are more annoyance than value.  I've always been of the opinion that if something confuses me or causes misnunderstanding, or enlightens me then at least some others are in the same boat and would benefit from my observations.

I went out for 4 hours yesterday (last 30 minutes or so wern't in this area, though) to continue this investigation.  This is likely my last post in this thread unless someone has questions or comments which I can respond/add to.  I spent part of the time searching the 40% of the trail I handn't searched in detail on the previous hunt (Wednesday) and the rest in the creek.  I changed my settings to Park 2 MF, recovery speed 6 (still iron bias F2=6 and 6 inch coil).

I found a few more bullets but not nearly as many.  In a picnic area along the trail I did get a couple beavertails and ring-and-beavertails.  I noticed that this lower (elevation) part of the trail had much more soil overburden (about 3 inches worth) comparted to the upper trail which was exposed gravel/crushed stone.  As a result, the targets were a bit deeper.  No coins but a few other non-ferrous items (strike wheel off of a modern disposable lighter, for example).

I did find some coins in the creek -- one clad dime, one Zincoln, and one or two copper alloy Memorial pennies; no old coins.  The dime was green enough to make me think it had been there a long time.  Creeks around here are similar to those in gold country -- heavy targets tend to settle out first (and thus deeper) and especially congregate in transverse bedrock cracks.  I've found this convincingly in a creek near my house.  Similar to many gold-bearing creeks, often the bedrock is buried under thick layers of gravel overburden.  That is the case with this creek (so far).

As always I'm left wondering many things:

1) were there ever old coins here?

2) if so, have they been vacuumed by other detectorists?

3) if not, are they hiding, either deeper than I can detect, or washed downstream?

4) are they there within reach but my settings and technique aren't good enough to find them?

Interestingly the lesson I thought I learned isn't the lasting one.  I have a new appreciation for carefully setting up the detector for these trying conditions.   In mild or moderate, consistent ground with not much trash you can get away with about any detector, coil, and settings.  As the ground gets more difficult the requirements for proper tuning go up considerably.  I've allowed myself to get hypnotized by those mild conditions.  Now I've been shocked into understanding that isn't the right way to go in every site.  Of course many know this and many books, articles, and posts have said this.  But there's something special about learning from experience, particularly your own mistakes.

 

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Not for nothing but I enjoy and often look for your posts first, never boring and always bring up good questions or have great answers so keep slugging away on that keyboard if your not out swinging.

Much of the ares here are considered picked clean yet a friend of mine with his Nox and myself still find coins as well as all sorts of relics like buttons etc. We rarely get skunked. It isn't that we do anything super special other than take our time over the targets that are left.

More often than not the good targets are still in the trash. I would consider an area picked clean when I run a machine in all metal mode and hear nothing.

High trash areas whether it be modern aluminum trash or old bits of iron from structures and equipment that shed its parts all over tend to hide the good stuff. It takes patients and perseverance to pick through it all short of a dig all approach. I personally don't dig all or I would just drag my beach machine along. I think a dig all approach with an ib machine defeats the purpose of having the ability to discriminate.

There are a few old cobble stone roads, some have patches of pavement over them and other areas have gravel. Those areas I have never heard any deep targets, best I have found was a wheatie or some modern change on top. Possible that there are targets deeper than my machines can go but more likely there just isn't much there. Anything dropped tend to stay at that point until found as there are no earthworms to cycle the stuff lower.

Creak beds and rivers can be tricky as floods over the years can push stuff way down stream where you may think something was, ie an old park that had coins could have those coins in an drainage system or deep pool. Rivers always change. Big boulders and protected shorelines may be better to check.

It is possible that iron is masking your finds, you may want to eliminate any iron discrimination  and go with just a low iron audio and listen for all. DD coils can be handy as when you hit a mixed target and it is iron only in one direction but something different in another it is worth digging. Fast recovery speed is a big plus for this to catch that little spark of something else other than a grunt. On my MK I use the 3 tone for this, the Gold Racer I will use disc1 with imask on 1. Lower frequencies tend sound off a masked object but the numbers may spike up ie 5khz an iron nail or rust halo above a dime will raise the number and 14khz+ the numbers may drop or just spark. I purposely test different scenarios so when in the field I have a better chance of not walking over something that might be good. I was curious about some the guys talking about up averaging as in the field I never noticed that anomaly and didn't notice it because I rarely use the 5khz in land. Though it may produce a junk number I find it useful because it shows a difference between iron and something else rather than just a smothered iron signal. Big iron will spike but much like a crushed can you can hear it the same as you raise your coil.

Rust patches (not natural patches) like halos from iron can send a target signal to the rim of the coil and not the center. I haven't figured out what causes it but in the field I can hear it because the sound will drop out like a reverse tone roll. This always seems to happen when there is a non iron object below a rust.

Smaller coils help. The 6" coil should do better as you have a smaller detection field and less likely to pollute the signal from more targets.

So if you think there is nothing there because your machine or any machine (not including pi's) say so but your gut tells you otherwise, trust your gut. I tend to agree that the easy stuff is gone so my initial thoughts on cherry picking has already been done and unfortunately not by you.

I wouldn't give up on that area.

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Thanks for the positive feedback, Ken, and thanks for your thoughts on dealing with these difficult sites.  This post should be bookmarked by many (I've done so myself), there is so much juicy advice.  Obviously you are a thinking type of detectorist.  I suspect those are the most successful, and I've found that when I'm on a cold streak at least I enjoy the thinking part.  (I'd rather have both thoughtful hunts and good finds, though!)  As an example you've posted in the past (with excellent finds) about searching in the woods and some of your techniques.  Many detectorists choose not to be bothered by this kind of difficult site; easier to hunt the nicely mowed grass fields.  But those comfortable sites are most likely where others have detected, in some cases many times -- aka 'hammered' sites.  (Another parallel to natural gold detecting -- the conveniently accessed locations are the ones most hard hit and least likely to produce large nuggets except for maybe really deep ones.)

One exception in your detailed and informative post above I'll point out (only exception I noticed) is that for gravel or crushed stone pavement (walkways, roadways, parking lots) there can be deep targets if more than one layer of aggregate has been put down at different times.  I have such a parking lot in this park.  I got a weak (deep?) high tone signal and was salivating it was going to be good.  I used my pick to (carefully) dig down about 5 inches only to find a Memorial penny.  😞  I agree that if the pavement is left alone, the targets stay near the surface.  (Good example are my many turn-of-the-century fired lead bullets and casings in an earlier post's photo above.)  It's the repaving process that effectively pushes targets deeper.

Thanks also for encouragement in not giving up on this particular sub-site.  With all the lead bullets alone, some of which are right where nickels ring up, it's likely even if previously detected there are still some goodies.  Fighting through the iron masking is the hard part (as always) and persistence, experimentation, and thought will probably produce if I'm right.  I think I've been spoiled this year making finds in the comfortable areas.  As for the creek, this probably isn't the best time of year since it's rather loaded with leaves (as are the wooded areas) and the water is getting cold!  But I'm sure I'll be back in there, too, hopefully with my thinking cap firmly attached.  Good news is that even when the park is loaded with visitors they aren't in this shallow part of the creek, only downstream where they can swim.

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Thanks.

You are right on gravel paths sometimes they just dump new gravel over, sometimes the scraped it down and put more down to level it so that can be a huge variable.

I did neglect to point out don't run the machine too hot. I make that mistake constantly. By punching up the gain so the machine sounds off on every tiny bit can be really counter productive. The machine may pick up on the targets but your mind won't with all the noise.

I try to make a couple swings and and bring the gain up until it starts to chatter on the ground then back it off just a bit. I have discovered that hearing those bits constantly just smothers the more substantial targets like coins etc.

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