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Tarsacci Performance It Hot Culpeper Soil


abenson

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Should have posted this review a few months back but never seemed to get around to it. I took a trip to Virginia in November 2020 for 6 days to Hunt the Diggin In Virginia event. Hugh Campbell was at this event also with his Tarsacci and hopefully he will add his thoughts. I used it 2 days and below is my experience with the Tarsacci for those that want to know how it handles the hot soil.

Day 1-Used the Tarsacci for about 3 hours just to see what settings were required and how the unit handled the hot soil. Settings were 12 and 18 KHz, threshold -2, sensitivity 7, Black Sand OFF, salt balance 44, ground balance 552 (which surprised me), Disc mode with disc set at -30. The Tarsacci with the above settings ran quiet and stable. I dug a lot of targets, all iron just so I could confirm what I was hearing. Some targets were clearly iron as negative numbers were mostly present from all angles. However, some of the targets were really hard to tell if they were iron or not as the signal gave about 50/50 positive and negative numbers. I will elaborate more below in the comments about my 7 hour hunt.

Day 3-Rained all day long, so I opted to use the Tarsacci instead of the GPX since it isn’t waterproof. The settings changed drastically due to the wet soil. In order to get the Tarsacci stable enough to hunt the wet ground I had to run either 6.4 or 9 KHz, threshold -2, sensitivity 7, Salt balance all the way up to 50, ground balance changed between mid-500’s up to low-800’s, all metal mode. Now let me elaborate on some of the settings.

Black sand OFF worked best but the machine was quieter with is ON. However, the signal changed with it on to a more elongated signal which made it harder for me to tell a good target from a ground signal or bad ground balance. I ran all metal mode due to all the false signals running in disc mode. It was just easier to tell what a good signal was and then evaluate it in all metal. Now the ground balance was always changing like crazy from the bottom of a hill to the top of a hill. On the low ground at the base of the hills the ground was about 550, as you went up the hill the ground changed and you could tell by how unstable the Tarsacci got so I had to re-ground balance about every 10 feet, At the top of the hills the ground balance was about 810. From this experience salt balance could use a higher range. I was all the way up to 50 and could have used a few more points to get it right on. It may or may not have helped with the ground balance. I also tried tracking ground balance and the machine was not as stable as simply re ground balancing as needed. One thing I noticed with ground balance, if you got it on and then manually went down a few points to make it negative, the machine was supper quiet. But it was a pain in the you know what with the ground changing so much. If you could keep on the same level of the hills it would stay in balance for a while, but it wasn’t practical to hunt that way.

Now for the targets recovered and how deep the Tarsacci is in the hot Culpeper soil. I used the Tarsacci for 7 hours in the rain and recovered 6 .58 cal. minie balls and 8 pieces of camp lead. Down to about 6 or 7 inches the Tarsacci has no issue telling ferrous from non ferrous. It’s the deeper targets down to about it’s limit of approximately 11 inches that things get tricky. 2 of the bullets I recovered came from about the 11 inch range, so I know it will get at least that deep and still be able to tell a good target with proper signal and ID evaluation. The Tarsacci will go deeper but at that point you are digging everything.

Since targets were not closely located, I opted to use All-metal the entire 7 hours. When I got a signal, I would circle the target making multiple sweeps in each direction and watch the ID. As I said targets down to about 7” were no problem to ID. Deeper targets did give some good data as to what they were by circling the target and watching the ID. For the most part I dug all questionable signals so I could learn what to look for. Nails about half the time would double deep. Also, for the most part nails could be identified because they would read negative when sweep across the short side and had mixed positive and negative numbers when swept length wise. A bullet or camp lead on the other hand when questionable would read mixed positive and negative numbers all the way around and the positive number range stayed in mid 20’s when they did bounce. Now deep odd shaped iron was the easiest to tell because it bounced between -28, 29, 30 to positive 28, 29, 30 indicating iron wrap. I was fooled by quit a bit of bend wire as it did have the same characteristics as the deeper bullets. The area I hunted had been pounded by GPX’s for the 2 days before, so I feel like the Tarsacci performed pretty well in recovering 14 good targets.

I hate to make this a comparison discussion, but I think it will help put things into perspective. A lot of people want to know what to use when they hunt this hot soil. I have used the Deus, Equinox, Tarsacci and GPX and feel I know them pretty well. The Deus and Equinox in my experience can give a good ID down to about 6 inches on coin sized targets, 10 inches on bigger targets like a breast plate. The GPX is really deep, bullets to 16 inches are not uncommon, but is also a PI. The Tarsacci is somewhere in the middle and definitely has it’s place and IMO handles the soil better than both the Equinox and Deus. If you are on a budget and lived in the area of Culpeper and could only have 1 machine, I think the Tarsacci would be my pick. It’s waterproof, light, and has reasonable depth. It also makes a great backup to the GPX for days when the weather is bad. I personally won’t take my GPX in the rain. Every time I have, even when covered, I always end up with problems. Last time it was my headphone connection to the battery getting wet and shorting out. The time before that the cable connection from the battery to the detector got wet and shorted out. The Tarsacci in the rain was issue free. I used the Garrett z-lynk system on it covered with a plastic bag and had no issues.

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