Parks Are A Different Beast Than Beaches

[Digalicious]

31 minutes ago, Sirius said:

Nickels are in the gold range 20ish to 25 so it would keep in a good amount of gold but also beaver tails seem to be in the same area. I'll need to check again.

Well, you have to decide if you want to cherry pick only the coin signals OR go for gold as well. As you know, if you want gold, then you'll have to dig massive amounts of foil, pulltabs, and aluminum bottle caps.

[Sirius]

3 minutes ago, Digalicious said:

Well, you have to decide if you want to cherry pick only the coin signals OR go for gold as well. As you know, if you want gold, then you'll have to dig massive amounts of foil, pulltabs, and bottle caps.

tbh the gold might have to come from the beach for the most part; somehow less trash at the beach than trashy parks. I'm not much of a park detector anyhow but it would be nice to learn when high tides prevent me from going to beaches.

[Sirius]

They do say that if you want gold, you gotta dig up the pull tabs/ beaver tails and nickels. If there's no avoiding that then i'd just have to shift my main focus! Don't have to necessarily dig up every target, just those pull tabs/pennies. Probably more pull tabs than anything since it's closer to the gold range.

[Sirius]

Took to a nearby park for 3 hours today, and learned about listening to the beeps of my machine. It was quite the enlightening experience because being able to hear the difference between a coin and a rusty bottle cap is monumental. Coins are sharp and won't tone break when swung over multiple times, whereas bottle caps will tone break when swung over along with producing a not so sharp sound. The target ID helps with identifying what it could be 45-46 tend to be memorial pennies, while 50+ are either quarters, silver or (Lead)? Beaver tails/pull tabs are within the gold and nickel range and have to be dug up if you wanna find gold. I also dig low tones too but those 15-16 tend to be foil. I'll definitely need to put more time into it, but so far so good! Also yeah I need to check high traffic areas, more drops there.

[Sirius]

Followed the same pattern for a the original park I hunted at, much better coin to trash ratio but still alot of trash as expected! I didn't cut out any targets as i wanted to hear it all and train my ears to the sounds of trash and treasure. Treasure is pretty rare, and i have still yet to compare sounds with what little gold I found on the beach and stuff I find at parks.
An interesting bit I discovered is that modern day pull tabs tend to make a high pitched sound like coins, but they double tap. That is you'll hear the initial beep but then a fainter but still high beep comes right after when you swing over multiple times. I'm guessing it's because of the pull tab holes that prompts the machine to make these noises. 

[Bootscrape]

Do yourself a favour and watch some videos of Paystreak with the Legend in his parks.

No discrimination for him, he’s purley a tone hunter. Calls targets before he digs ‘em.

I have learnt a lot just from watching him at work.... especially his target recovery and leaving the ground pristine.

This is one of his latest with the LG24.

 

[DSMITH]

On 2/13/2023 at 3:27 PM, Sirius said:

Followed the same pattern for a the original park I hunted at, much better coin to trash ratio but still alot of trash as expected! I didn't cut out any targets as i wanted to hear it all and train my ears to the sounds of trash and treasure. Treasure is pretty rare, and i have still yet to compare sounds with what little gold I found on the beach and stuff I find at parks.
An interesting bit I discovered is that modern day pull tabs tend to make a high pitched sound like coins, but they double tap. That is you'll hear the initial beep but then a fainter but still high beep comes right after when you swing over multiple times. I'm guessing it's because of the pull tab holes that prompts the machine to make these noises. 

Here is a good coin program for the Legend 1.09 version, by Scott Luppro on YouTube known as Mental Metal Detecting, I have been using his coin program in my Legend that is updated to 1.10 Beta test version 2

but beware you will miss gold jewelry and some other targets if you set this up with this, this is a coin program, I did tweak it a little so as to not miss some gold rings, but not much it is a vary good coin program

 

https://mentalmetaldetecting.com/nokta-makro-legend-coin-program-setup/

 

[Mike_Hillis]

Best new park hunter advice I can give you is turn down your sensitivity to start...and just dig high conductive coins for a while (dimes and higher).

You get three things....better separation in the trash, experience finding good targets in the trash, and an understanding of park dynamics.  Once you get some time in it you can bump your sensitivity.  

Good luck. 

Mike

[JCR]

Excellent advise.     And slow way down.

[Jeff McClendon]

Here are a couple of things I do.

I have two main turf coin/jewelry hunting strategies depending on how bad modern aluminum and iron/steel trash amounts are and just as important, where it is as in if it is mostly near the surface or scattered throughout the possible target depths.

Mostly, I like to hunt a "normal" modern trashed park with targets at various depths by hunting mostly with my ears. I set up a 6 tone custom audio program that is easy for me to remember tone wise (I am a professional musician.....) that corresponds to the Legends target IDs for Tone 1 (target IDs 3 to 10) - iron, T2 (target IDs 11 to 22) - small gold jewelry, T3 (target IDs 23-27)- modern nickels and medium sized gold jewelry, T4 (target IDs 28 to 42) - most pull tabs, aluminum screw caps, zinc pennies, huge gold rings, small silver jewelry, T5 (target IDs 43 to 47)- Indian Head pennies, Wheat pennies, Memorial pennies, clad dimes, Mercury dimes, Roosevelt dimes, medium sized silver jewelry, big pieces of aluminum, T6 ( target IDs 48 to 60)- quarters and anything bigger coin wise or aluminum wise. This can be used with Park, Field or Beach along any frequency setting.  However, at least where I detect in moderate to high mineralization, the Legend single frequency choices quickly lose all semblance of target ID accuracy on targets deeper than 3". Your results may definitely be different.

If the surface is totally trashed with aluminum and iron/steel trash I go nuclear with a 2 tone Pitch tones setup that accepts a little of the iron target ID range (IDs 5 to 10), the small gold and nickel range (IDs 14 to 27) and the zinc penny and up range (39 to 60). Sometimes I just want the copper penny and up range so I only accept 43 to 60. I am not after a lot of depth with this setup. I just want to find some decent targets amidst a ton of shallow trash so turning down sensitivity to a very comfortable 20 or less works just fine where I detect and causes less audio wackiness on surface targets since the Legend only uses DD coils.

Here is a photo of some of the gold targets that I have found in the last 2 years placed below their Legend target IDs along with the regularly occurring types of aluminum and steel trash. Random trash targets like the infinite variations of foil and can slaw are not included since they can appear anywhere due to size and depth. Both of the setups I detailed above are based on the tendencies shown in the photo. Due to the Legend's excellent multi frequency technology, the target IDs shown in the photo have been highly repeatable and consistent. They aren't perfect but they are good enough for me down to about 10" depth using the 11" coil which I use a lot.

 

 

When I look at a park, I think about what types of things are done in the park now and in the past. The number one thing I think about is where would people congregate the most, like where would people get drunk or stoned, where would people go for shade when its really hot and where would lost items be found during a game, etc. At least here in the Denver area, the park maintenance crews regularly use blowers to clear off the sidewalks. Dropping something on a sidewalk like a coin or ring will usually result in that object bouncing and maybe even rolling. Same with concrete courts. So I always hunt very carefully around sidewalks and basketball/tennis courts. Tot lots are also a great place to hunt.

I have something like five accessible freshwater beaches near me and hundreds of parks. I am a fairly practical person so I just do whatever is in front of me or easy to get to and don't fret about it. Since the Equinox 600/800 was released, I have been finding enough clad to pay for a new Equinox 800 or a Deus 2 Lite setup each year. I easily do the same or more in jewelry finds. I also have a 5 gallon bucket that is half full of pull tabs found in the last four years! 

Just a few ideas.