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Steve got my like at the first and second sentence. It's easier to ask forgiveness than ask permission. And for the lock - intent. I've been investigated and prevailed.

I have to admit when it come to urban metal detecting that I tend to think it is better to ask forgiveness than permission. There are various little rules on the books that can be interpreted by almost any government type person as prohibiting metal detectors, even though that was never the intent of the rule. What park does not have a rule about "defacing the grounds"? Many of these government people don't know the rules for sure, and the knee jerk reaction from anyone who is unsure is to just deny permission. I try to apply good common sense about where to dig or not and where the law is clear I abide by the law. Like no detecting in National Parks - the law is very clear on that. The most important thing is I try to be invisible. Detect oddball hours, detect on rainy days, detect on holidays, but whenever possible detect when you are going to be observed by a few eyeballs as possible. A little discretion goes a long way. We all tend to worry about it but the reality is that anyone actually being cited, fined, or punished in any way for normal casual metal detecting is incredibly rare. You are far more likely in a worst case scenario to simply be warned. This really is a situation where law enforcement had better things to do than chase around seniors with metal detectors. However, if a member of the public complains for any reason, they are duty bound to investigate. Again, a good reason to avoid people if at all possible. A visit to the local club nearest the location you wish to hunt and some low key inquiries about law enforcement actions against detectorists can give you clues about just how hot the water may or may not be.

As promised, gold found by the monster by Dales new girl. First detector she has ever used.

The government has everybody walking on pins and needles...I was in Santa Cruz last year and a nice couple walk by and watch me dig a target. The husband asks if it's legal to do this type of activity on the beach? like I was destroying the beach or something? I looked at him smiled and said yes this is the United states of America...He nodded in agreement. 5 seconds later the hole was covered by my foot and the next wave that came in. Good hunting out there! strick

For Klunker

Update: Well, I emailed the Treasure Coast Archaeological Society (metal detecting club in Sebastian). I figured if anyone knew about it, they would. They emailed me back and said water detecting around Melbourne was fine. So I'll just leave this here for ya'lll. You know....just in case. Thanks for all the input!

Chunky stuff! Thanks for a look. She should get a Find of The Month from Minelab! Mitchel

Years ago, I went to a federal office at a local lake, asked the man in charge if I could metal detect around within the federal property. His answer was, that I was the first to ask that question, and would have to check on the rules so he could give me an answer. Two weeks later he called back, saying, you can metal detect on the beach areas, and anywhere below the high water line, but nowhere else. Period. Bottom line, I think Steve is correct, the law enforcement have more important fish to fry, than hassling seniors w/metal detectors...well, I hope so...

Don't ask anymore......just go have fun. Technically speaking you are looking for a ring YOU lost. And any ancient treasures you find you just discard. There are times when even law enforcement officials don't know the law. And I will add one more thing...some laws are no better then the toilet paper they are written on. strick

Finds first for the TLDR people. As the finds in my current primary patch dwindle in numbers from being worked heavily the past two years, I'm scouting for a new primary patch to begin working. Using the criteria and method outlined in a previous post, I've located a very good location that is certain to hold gold, silver, and more. Today will be my first time boots on the ground at that location and I'll walk the reader through it along with my scouting method. Maybe it will help someone and provide insight or encouragement. Here is the sat. view 5 playgrounds, one skate park, basketball, tennis, two soccer fields, two softball fields, two shelters, one former 1890's to 1950's church location on site. Here are my paths while scouting. Deus in red, V3i in green. So, from the sat. images there are many hot-spots to strike, and I won't try to get them all as this is a long term prospect, and I only desire to determine 3 primary things today. 1. Pressure - hunting pressure from other detectorists. 2. Trash composition and density. 3. Presence - Is there jewelry where I expect it to be. Deus gets the top spot today as it's the ideal scouting unit. Light, fast, great tones to read the trash. From the parking lot I begin and move to the skate park since it's close and can hold silver and junk jewelry along with lots of coins. Foil seems to be the primary trash along the way, and around the skate feature the aluminum kicks in - light can slaw and tabs primarily. I can hear lots and lots of coins, zinc and copper cents mostly, but a healthy quantity of dimes as well. I select a few targets I know are quarters and pennies, then intentionally sample some of the larger better sounding trash before moving on. The primary traffic flow from one side of the park to another is divided by a slight drainage ditch with the easiest pass being on either end... and people naturally take the easiest route, so I do too. Pennies everywhere! Zinc mostly, healthy dose of copper, decent selection of dimes, quite a few quarters...light trash mostly foil and ferrous bits... but I keep on moving through without digging a single target. Not interested today. Moving to the goal at the primary soccer field I work my way over to the nearest corner, then down the sideline to mid-field before cutting over to the center. Then I work my way to the opposite goal before coming around the back net. From there, and because of its close proximity to the goal, I briefly enter the playground before hitting the nearest corner of the soccer field diagonally opposite from the first corner I hit. Quarters everywhere! I decide to spend some time here sampling, cherry picking the best sounds. Within 10 minutes I found the heart pendant necklace. Jewelry confirmed, nice. So I pause, crank up the notch to 93 and take all the quarters before moving on. Erasing the notch I notice an area of the playground is different. Something was removed and not replaced. I suspect one of the super dangerous merry-go-rounds that children today get no experience or joy from used to be there. Clad everywhere....move on. Swing-set looks vintage so I check that and the mostly abandoned softball backstop area nearby. The trash picks up and bottle caps start to appear below the coil. I dug a first (for this park) beavertail ring pull, nice...a sign there might be some silver coins lurking around here. I'm getting hot by now so start thinking of shade and where to find some. It's scarce, so good places to concentrate. I mentally discriminate everything but quarters. Lots of nice signals, lots of trash and rusty caps. So far this is the trashiest area and I'm impressed it's not worse. Out of water and thirsty, I head back to the parking lot where I started, taking any quarters I come across. There are so many coins around it's obvious to me this park has never been heavily worked over by much of anyone in a long time, if ever. This place is a clad mine. Exactly how my current patch started out! I switch out units for the V3i and head towards the nearby secondary soccer field goal. I work one small corner of the goal net taking everything in a 6 foot diameter...clad and tabs mostly. Then I work right down the field towards the only clump of trees between the two fields and casually work the area randomly, still cherry picking signals but expanding the range down below zinc cents a little plus taking all nickel range targets as I find them. Getting tired and hot I'm thinking of wrapping it up so I head out to the sideline and try to find the trash zone where people sit and spectate. There isn't much trash to detect so I decide to just pick a line inside the playing field and take everything not obviously trash out of the ground. As I reached the corner of the field the silver ring shows up. Someone threw the ball into play and lost a ring perhaps. Now we're talking! Satisfied with the mission I walked off and swung over the curb area near the parking lot to get a feel for the trash there, too. With light to moderate trash, tons of clad signals, two pieces of jewelry - I have all the intel I need to know that this park is going to produce a few gold items, eventually. I'm hesitant to give 5 stars so we'll rate it at a 4 plus star park, IMO. Next hunt the tedious process of clad layer removal begins, oh, joy. Thanks for your time. Good hunting.

I was detecting a steep narrow gulch with a vertical wall on one side and thick viscous thorn bushes on the other when a red eyed golden fanged rattle snake slithered out from a crevasse right at the level of my jugular vein. As the snake coiled back to deliver my slow painful death, I leaped straight up about 5', did a 360 degree pirouette, an delivered a stunning, precise, back hand blow with my GPZ7000 light saber and bonked the ol' snake right on the noggin. The snake crawled back into his hole in humiliated defeat and I continued detecting. I then found one of golden fangs that I had dislodged during the brief battle for my life. There my be one or two of you that question the truth of parts of my story so I have retained the services of Sourdough Scott to present photographic proof, should it become necessary.

And the million dollar question? What is "Extra Deep"?

Look forward to your results Alex. Love seeing gold from different areas. Re headphones, the Deteknix wireless with 3.5mm plug on the transmitter are a perfect fit for the GM1000.

Glad you're OK, but how is the ZED?

Marty - I provided some constructive feedback to Minelab in the attached "Wish List" survey. It was interesting to hear what people were looking for. I can only hope they use some of these suggestions for future upgrades. I know many times engineering's hands are tied as to what can be done to a product. Typically, marketing pulls all the strings. But the GPZ is young enough that they are not going to just stop doing improvements. For example, I know they will eventually get to the smaller coil. If I recall correctly, this was documented to be in the 11" range. But with the Gold Monster out there, they are probably spacing out their releases so that they are not competing with themselves.

"Not only is removing trash from the beach legal - it's encouraged!"

SDC 2300

My favorite reply is hopefully being able to point toward a dad who's helping his two kids who're busily digging out a sub-basement n saying "go ask him.." If one of those isn't right there handy the answer is always "absolutely..!" The big tweak with this one is my holes get filled in; their holes get fallen into.. Beaches can be dangerous places, especially on moonless nights.. Swamp

I would like to see a variable auto smoothing and variable ground type controls and two or three customer designed presets to save time resetting thee or four functions each time I want to cover a small piece of ground for small/ shallow vs. large/ deep. I would also like to be able to download an arm strap that would fit over my coat sleeve.

I was asked a similar question once. A guy storms across the park right to me... "Is that legal?" I laughed in reply, "Everything is legal unless prohibited by law!" I don't think he understood, but he went away.

Thanks Steve, Just a couple of points worth noting. The "26" series solid coil is listed as 10.5" long, so the new "24" series at 9.5" long is a little more semi-elliptical. The 10.5x5" solid coils for the Gold Racer and Fors Gold+ remain unchanged, as solid coils are generally preferred for goldfield use. Actually the RC26 solid is a excellent match up with the Racer 2 for prospecting duties, or for generally working rocky terrain, so any Racer users should snap up a coil before they are all gone. Cheers

Steve' There is heaps of options in reguards to Detector technology here in Australia 70% of prospectors that "require" a detector probably don't need to spend more than a few Grand on a unit maybe less, some require spending $10,000 plus $2000 worth of assesories. iv never required the worlds most expencive detector to wander around the bush whistling a tune, but iv got a few buddy's that do... im able to get the most from a machine that probably equals the least experienced with the top of the range, iv got no need to keep flipping detectors for bigger and better plastic fantastic's out there im limited to good Detecting time as it is. Affordable, ergonomics and performance all the way.

I am glad you are OK Klunker. Those gold fangs can destroy lives leaving permanent cases of gold fever.

That is the nugget you found that made you make up the story, right? The 'poison' got into his system anyway. I wish we had something to scale to know how big that snake was!

Hey, you got me beat this trip. I just got back from several days in northern Nv today...hunted Rye Patch for 2 1/2 days and got 3 little nuggets which only totaled 1.36grams....better than a skunk though! Would've liked to have run into you....good luck on the rest of your hunt!

I'lll take some of that poisen for sure....Glad your OK strick

Very informative information about your through approach to hunting this area. Thank you for sharing.

That is a really great post - thank you for sharing your knowledge with forum members!

.... Great tale mate.....

Thank you GB Amateur. It always takes more time for these posts than it should because I create and peck them out on a tablet using the touch screen qwerty board, and with the unavailable to anyone Photoshop touch for Android devices.... it's painfully slow. There was more detail I intended to explain when I started, but time curtailed that when I accidentally closed the nearly completed images without saving...Doh! I am happy the effort helps someone. Kind words, Sir. Thank you.

Wow, you spent a lot of time relaying this info to us, and I want you to know how much I appreciate your effort. This is exactly the kind of thing that will help me. I started my harem last year with two parks. Both sites were either homestead farms or industrial sites back in the 1800's. While still hunting the parks this year, I've added two schools built in first half of 20th C. Unfortunately one of those turns out to be private, which I should have known/found out before hunting without permission... Surprising what I still don't know after living in this town for 35 years. Please continue the reports. Wish I had someone locally as experienced and throrough as you to show me the ropes. I'd happily take you to my hunting grounds and watch you dig up treasure after treasure that I know I'm passing over, just to soak up the knowledge I would gain from that experience.

Last year we were at Pismo beach which is absolutly a great place to hunt. I was toiling along detecting during mid day when the beach is absolutely loaded with people. I happen look up at one point and I notice 5 very attractive middle aged women sitting on the beach watching me and smiling.. .....bachelorette party I'm thinking... So I stop and take off my headphones. Sweat is dripping off me and I'm feeling kinda studly so I shove the head of the scoop forcefully into the sand with my foot, lean against the carbon fiber handle and smile back at them lol. Any luck? one of them asks.... Just some coins I reply back..... Then the next one asks ....Whats your best find? My wife I reply.....Good answer says another... lol strick

With the effort you are putting in it is just a matter of time. An impressive pile of finds regardless!