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I had a couple of hours to detect today after another mini blizzard. I decided to stay close to home and hunt next to a curb at a local park that I have hunted with Deus 1 and the Equinox 800 in the past. The area I was hunting is absolutely loaded with aluminum trash and steel crown bottle caps with various states of rust unless they are recent drops. Very iron mineralized ground on top of the thousands of trash targets. Knowing this in advance I was thankful that I have the Deus 2 (and the Legend and Equinox 900) which do not have half of the regularly found aluminum pull tabs ID's landing right on top of the most common gold ring target IDs and the US nickel target IDs (Equinox 600/800/Vanquish models) both of which I really enjoy digging. In the past I have tried Deus 1 at places like this and quickly became super frustrated with all of the silver target ID range responses that could easily be US copper pennies, clad dimes clad quarters, silver coins and silver jewelry but instead were lowly pull tabs and bits of aluminum along with steel crown bottle caps that were showing up in the upper 80s to upper 90s target ID range due to severe up averaging if they were deeper than 3" or so in this iron rich dirt. Deus 2 using its multi modes based on the Fast program simply does not do that to all of that aluminum and steel trash unless it is right at the edge of detection in the dirt around here, so I had no hesitation picking it for detecting this super trashed area. I was using a saved program based on Sensitive, with 5 tones Square Wave audio, disc on 10, iron audio ON, reactivity 2, Silencer 1, bottle cap reject 1 and sensitivity on 95. Deus 2 was a bit jittery but consistent which is how I like it. The US nickel medium pitched tone was set up to sound on target IDs between 59 and 63. The highest tone for clad dimes and up was set 90 to 99. So, I concentrated on the gold and silver range of target IDs specifically any good sounding target with a consistent ID of 59 to 63 and any target with a consistent target ID of 90 and above and was basically cherry picking for US nickels/medium sized gold rings and US coins above zinc pennies with any silver thrown in. The 1.9 gram 10K ring had a target ID of 62/63 just like the nickels and square tabs in the photo. These targets were in the 3 to 6" depth range. There has been a lot of chatter about using single frequencies for detecting and how they are just "better" especially in reference to the new Minelab X-Terra Pro. I deliberately checked the target IDs of each of the low to mid conductor targets in the bottom half of the paper plate photo before digging them. I used default Deus 2 Mono set on 17 kHz. All of those targets which are normally 59 to 66 had target IDs above 85................. I'm very happy to use Deus 2 FMF simultaneous multi frequency tech, that's for sure since I can at least call the non-ferrous conductivity of targets before I dig them for the most part. Thanks for reading.

Looks like my luck has changed from finding nothing worthwhile for weeks to finding a little silver mine.. As part of a new quest to hunt places which I normally drive past on my way to popular beaches, I decided to pull over at two trees along the beach.. This is not a touristy spot and I thought my chances were slim.. To my surprise this spot yielded ten pieces of silver (dated from 1904 to 1916) and two silver rings (one is 975, the other says 'sterling silver').. Also two bullets.. It's always great to hunt spots where no detectorist has been before.. I've found a few spots like this and I'm sure there's plenty more.. It doesn't really matter if no one goes there today, a hundred years ago (or more) it could have been a popular hangout..

There is a long thread about issues I have been having with new members here. Long story short there are spammers who can evade automated spam checks by setting up endless new email accounts. They often join, post once, then edit the posts later to include links. This means I spend way too much time now reviewing new members who only post once or twice, going back for months. More obvious have been the spam attacks where we get hit by a bunch of new members who post dozens of crazy links in very short order. So here is my plan. I will create a New Member account. New members will not be able to include links in their posts. They will not be able to download from the Downloads area, or post in the Classifieds. They will have a limit of three PM messages a day - enough to contact somebody with an ad in the Classifieds who has not included contact info. I am looking for feedback on this. People may only want to be contacted by longtime members, and don't want to hear from some person who just joined. If you want that, well, then include contact info in the ad. But maybe you don't want to put your contact info out for people to know? Not sure, but allowing a new member to PM while limiting the number keeps them from spamming the entire forum with junk mail, so works for me. The system allows for automated promotion, so after ten posts and 30 days, the person will automatically be promoted to the full member account. So this is easy to set up and requires no ongoing work on my part. It will get rid of both the sleeper spammers, and the massive spam attacks. Very few spammers are going to spend a month and ten posts when so much easier marks exist out there. One might argue this penalizes lurkers by not allowing them to download owner manuals or use the classifieds. The simple reality is those are rewards for participating members. It's the people who post regularly and help answer questions that make this forum what it is. People who join just to sell stuff or download stuff are using the forum while not contributing anything in return. That being the case they can't be missed since in a way they really are not here anyway. I've not done this yet but the more I think about it the more I like it, and just wanted to toss it out one last time for review or suggestions before implementing it. And I will use this as an opportunity to thank all of you who do post interesting content for others to read, and most especially thank those of you who answer questions for those that have them. That is what the forum is all about, and it is you all that make it happen. Without you, there is no forum, so again, my heartfelt thanks.

Deus 2, Equinox 900 and the Legend all have "tight discernment" of targets from my experience until targets start to be deep enough to be at the edge of detection. That really helps me when I am deciding how to hunt a modern aluminum and steel alloy trashed area. Some places I hunt have more spread out targets so I can dig everything that sounds good or has consistent enough numbers to get my attention. At other places like the curb area I hunted in the write-up, there is absolutely no way to dig even a tenth of the targets since there are just way too many. It's like hunting a carpet of rusty nails infested site except that the carpet of targets are nearly all non-ferrous. Those targets on the plate are the only ones I dug except for two aluminum screw caps that had US quarter target ID numbers that got tossed out with a dozen or so steel crown bottle caps that were on the surface. I really stuck to my plan of just digging the good sounding nickel and silver range targets. I wasn't notching anything and I will definitely go back to that spot and concentrate on other likely aluminum/gold target IDs in the 50s and 70s on another day since I heard a ton of them. The area I hunted was about 30 feet long and 10 feet wide and the amount of targets in that tiny area that Deus 2 audibly detected is ridiculous.

Thanks for all the feedback. Looks like a go. I will implement this over the weekend to reduce my workload due to excessive spammer activity. There will be a New Member account. There will be no ability to include links or to edit their own posts until they have made 10 posts and been a member more than 30 days. There will be no access to downloads or posting classifieds until after 10 posts and 30 days. There will be a limit of one Personal Message conversation per day so they can contact people with ads in the Classifieds. Any account that has not posted at all in the 30 day period will be deleted. Anyone with more than one but less than 10 posts will simply remain in the New Member account status indefinitely. The accounts that make at least ten valid posts and have been a member at least 30 days will automatically be promoted to full Member status. This will give access to the Classifieds and Downloads and remove the PM limit. This does not affect any existing accounts!! Any current members with less than 10 posts etc need not worry. Anyone with no posts however should at least post once or lose your account after 30 days have passed.

Did you not watch Terminator ? 🙂 The Internet's always been the lawless wild west, the more popular it's become the more wild it gets. A difficult thing to police so it's up to individuals to control their own piece of the Internet, Steve with the assistance of Chase does a good job around here of that, with all of the possible disruptions very little affects the users. If we all do our bit and use the "report" button when we see something suspicious I'm sure it helps a little to keep it at bay. The more difficult it's made for them the less likely they'll bother here.

Now Steve I hope you know that when I am swinging the detector I become a BOT. So when I make a post on here am I still considered a BOT, I just want to make sure that I am still human at times. I believe that what you are changing things to will work quite well and get rid of the bad BOTS. Just another question for you, when you are swinging your detector do you feel like a BOT?

Thanks. (and Thanks 67GTA). When I suspect falsing in Deep HC or General (my two main search programs), I just switch on over to Relic with IAR on 5 to see if it resolves to a ferrous tone. That plus turning on the target pretty much solves falsing. As far as iron VDI and non-ferrous tone, fine, I'll take my chances on that one. Again, the shifting over to relic resolves it one way or the other. If it sill rings non-ferrous regardless of vdi, then I will dig it.

Nice post Erik! Never had a silver bonanza like that! 👍 Great photos too, I think those two trees would have called me too. 🙂 Ended your nothing streak with a bang 💥

May 24 2002 Part Three Jacob said it was back in late May in the 1937 mining season when it all happened. The crew had decided to go into town to blow off steam but Jacob decided to stay at camp. He remembered it being a cold night and he had stoked up a fairly big campfire and was sipping whisky and thinking about the previous season. Before he went any further he looked at the three of us sitting around the fire with him and asked if we had ever heard any strange sounds around camp since we had arrived. We shook our heads no. He nodded and went on with the story. According to him he had heard voices coming down the mountain along the side of the creek near camp. Jacob said the sounds got his attention and he grabbed his Thompson and got out of the campfire light and hid in a dark spot outside of camp. He kept real still as two figures started to come into view. They were jabbering away about gold and mining and both of them were drinking from whisky bottles and laughing as they came into camp. Jacob went on to say that something about them didn’t look right and he could see right through them at times. He stood up to get a better look and realized it was Jed and Whisky Jack as sure as could be. When Jacob hollered out to them he said they looked him dead in the face with cold stares and it made his skin crawl. He said he was so shocked he could hardly get any words to come out of his mouth. Then he said the two of them kind of floated off the ground a few feet and drifted slowly up the mountain until they were out of sight. Then Jacob looked at us and said this was not a lie but as true as true could ever be so help him. He told us that he expected to see them again out here one night. He didn’t exactly know why but just had one of his feelings. TO BE CONTINUED ...................

I have hunted around 50 Denver area parks regularly and thoroughly with an Equinox 800 since getting one back in mid 2018. I have hunted some of those same parks and exact same areas recently with the Legend, Deus 2 and Equinox 900 and I have been removing lots of nickels with each detector that I just couldn’t definitively pick out of the adjacent aluminum trash with the Equinox 800. There were just too many overlapping aluminum targets that shared the Equinox 600/800 12/13 target ID area. With the Legend, Deus 2 and Equinox 900, the nickel target ID area is not nearly as crowded with other overlapping trash target IDs. Nickels and gold rings with similar IDs are super easy to hear with these expanded target ID detectors.

There is always someone on this forum that has the correct answer so here goes... I dug this ring on the beach on Monday afternoon. It is marked 750 and a has a hallmark that appears to be a wolf head facing left to the right of it. Over the wolf is SA and under it is MRM with the R about half a space lower than the M M. The attached is a facsimile that is about as good as I could come up with. The "wolf head" is to small to photograph with my smartphone but I could make it out with a 60X loupe. The 750 and wolf head are stamped on the outside of the ring too. No hallmarks on the inside of the ring at all. It has 37 tiny diamonds mounted on it. It is a pretty little thing. It weighs 2.85g and is size 6. Does anyone have any idea of a Maker or even a country of origin? Thanks, Joe

In 1980 my father and I remove 13 pounds. mAYbe ThAtz whY iM, a weE bIt TiltEd.

Cherry picking high conductors is why nickels are a plenty I suspect. The newer machines give you a tighter I D range on low conductors.

I like looking for undetected ground, this means a lot of walking over the ground. To have a better hit rate for new patches, a bit (really a lot of research) research is required. First get a geo map of the area. Note where the mines are, then take a look at the geo map type of rocks at those location. Use the mine in the area that you select and search for old miners workings, better still the test/sample holes in the rock type that the mine is in. When using a detector to find a spot try keeping in areas that look shallow as detectors are limited in their depth range.

I'm good with that, anyone that reads my off the cuff, overreactive at times, post's would know I'm only human. However I'm a bit worried, my grammar is always perfect..... mineralization or mineralisation hmm.

Steve,i seriously think this is a wise move,and will eliminate all the potential spammer,all the genuine folks who apply to join the forum wont mind at all,but the initial hurdle that will be in place should eliminate the majority of spammer.....so yes this suggestion from you gets my approval.

There goes Simon, doing research again. (He once got lucky finding some silver but we can't read much about that anymore.) I prefer Erik's luck! Oh, you say you can do research and get lucky too? haha WTG Erik. Go grab some more history. Mitchel

Great finds and great saves. The rings look a little odd, and the coins are nice. Time to just pick a spot when driving around and start detecting with luck like that. Good luck on your next outing and stay safe out there.

Life-like bots convincingly impersonating real people. I don't like the direction this Brave New World is headed..........frightening

Those trees don't show up on old photos, they're far younger than the coins.. Old photos of this part of the island show a forest along this bay right up to the beach, but there may have been a small clearing here a hundred years ago.. The landscape is very different now and I'm forever having to imagine where people would swim/picnic in the olden days..

The tree's look good for climbing, and kids playing on, and with you being in a crazy hot climate people would be sitting around under a tree like that quite often, much more shade than a typical gum tree 🙂 i wonder what habitation was like on Magnetic Island in the early 1900's. The ferry started quite early on but I doubt it had the traffic of today. "By 1890 a resort had been started in Picnic Bay. In 1898 Robert Hayles Sr was so impressed by the potential of Magnetic Island he sold his other interests to build a resort on the island. Hayles was responsible for much of the development of Magnetic Island through tourism. In 1901 he started a regular ferry service to the island with his ship the Bee. Twelve months later this ship was wrecked on the rocks at Nobby Head, Picnic Bay, and the Phoenix was built by Hayles' sons to replace the vessel. The Hayles company remained operating services to Magnetic Island with a large number of different vessels until 1988" Picnic Bay area might be the best spot for hunting really old coins. Great finds!

Surface Quartz is a good start, it means that any gold bearing gravels are not too deep for a detector to scan. An old saying is "Gold is where you find it" meaning that even terrible looking ground sometimes has gold too. Local information is key....if you know anyone there, ask them.

Yep, this was a real story from him and he was very serious as I recall. I have one to tell along this same line tomorrow. Cheers.

What you do will be no problems for most real members. So looking forward to the new rules.

Thanks Doc, my radar is on overdrive most times but I still end up spending too much time hunting popular spots.. A very bad habit that I aim to change.. A change of habit = a change of luck..

Not much turf hunting with the Manticore yet. Weather... But so far, I am seeing the same. Manticore loves nickels. I did get in a park hunt one morning last weekend and got six nickels and only two square pull tabs. I feel like I had gotten "pretty good" at calling nickels with the Nox 800 but with less than 20 hours park hunting with the Manticore so far I feel like it's gotten noticeably easier to call them. Except the one nickel I was sure was a nickel, turned out to be a 14K gold ring. I'll take that kind of missed call 😂. - Dave

And how it would help the fish population, They think they are smart to stop dredge to help fish, they don't know they need spots to lay eggs in deeper water,

The new AI coming online is really making things interesting. It used to be you could spot spammers due to poor spelling or grammar, since many are based overseas. Now it's the other way around. Perfect English, perfect grammar is how I spot some. I figure that can't be a real gold prospector - and it's not! But they will fine tune even that, toss in a misspelled work and some slang to where an AI based bot can post and you can't tell. I actually get emails almost daily from people wanting to sell me on AI posters to keep the forum active - an army of robot posters! I can see where all this is going. All the real people leave, and we end up with bots chatting with each other online!

Very pretty ring, congrats on the find! I've never seen a hallmark or carat stamp on the outside of a ring, but I read somewhwere that is not uncommon for Eastern European jewelry. That wolf logo looks familiar, but I can't place it. "SA" with "Italy" stamped usually means made in Salerno Italy, but I've also seen the SA stamp on jewelry from China. Sorry that's not much help. A local jeweler could probably give you better information.

Steve, personally, I trust you know what you need to do and emphatically agree to whatever it is. We don’t want you to burn out on the thing so take all the precautions you need to keep this full-time job of yours running smoothly! Thank you so much for your time, it’s an awesome forum! And… your ideas above are great - that sounds like a perfect plan for dealing with it. I never thought about the ins and outs about running a forum, your efforts are appreciated!

Know nothing about the detectors you mention. As far as nickels go, back in my coin shooting days with my Etrac I'd hunt certain public parks, schools, etc. etc. and after several hunts I'd get an idea of the overall situation as to how hard an area has been hit and also an idea of the expertise of previous hunters and possibly the gear they used? After a few areas I'd get a feel for the location and notice things like most silver gone or maybe few coins in the surface to 6" range, etc....little clues. When silver was super sparse or "cherry picked" I'd focus on nickel targets/#'s and start popping V's and Buff's (and beaver tails). Most guys, especially in parks, scrim out nickel range targets because of trash. LOTS of nickels left out there guys along with the occasional gold ring that turns up in same range and many do. I called it "nickel knocking" and had a blast chasing the nickels and my last 2 season chasing nickels I'd average maybe 250/season with approximately 10% being buffs/V's/war nickels. Best place for nickels is curb strips because of way less beaver tails and general trash you'd find in more public areas like parks/schools etc. Another benefit hunting curb strips is the quality of the nickels is generally much better because most homeowners don't use fertilizer on that (city) curb strip. I had one city park that had lots of buffs/V nickels but whatever fertilizer they used just trashed the nickels so I quit hunting there entirely even though lots of V's and buffs turned up. Focus on the nickels and hit those curb strips.....have a bunch of fun! I guess my theory on why so many nickels is that most guys scrim them out to avoid trash...??? PS...only truly RARE coin I've ever dug was a 3-legged 1937D buff in great shape for a dug nickel because the curb strip never saw any fertilizer. Sold that 3 legger to a forum member on here..... Pic is very last coin shooting season (2017?) "keeper" nickels. Been on gold nuggs ever since...

If they would let people back in some of our rivers to dredge just think how much mercury could be removed from them. Chuck

I do believe that is the finest collection of ring pulls that I have ever seen Strick.

At this point I am about 20 hours in on the 11 x 13 coil. Here are some first impressions: Pros: * Coverage is enormous compared to the 9" coil. It doesn't detect just under the coil, there seems to be a significant halo around it as well. It gets my shovel every swing unless I drag it behind me. I found two silvers that rang from outside the area covered by the coil (and, to be fair, many beer cans) * Whatever problems existed with drooping appear to have been addressed, or are yet to appear. No noticeable drooping. * There seems to be a significant depth advantage over the 9" coil. I haven't verified this yet on an actual deep target, but air tests seem to indicate it. * Doesn't seem to be a lot more affected by EMI than the 9" coil. Cons (none unexpected): * Compared to the 9", it weighs a ton. Swinging it for a couple of hours is a workout. * it's not great in dense undergrowth. Overall impression: I love it and think it's definitely worth it if you have the 9" coil.

Relatively new to this forum but was a member years ago and only dropped out because I didn't have time with my work schedule to contribute much. Now I am retired and glad to be back. I think your plan is excellent and will do the job.

Interesting. I'll have to look for those numbers with my Legend. Think I was digging too many 23/24 ID's.

Agree Steve, sounds very reasonable. Love the forum and anything that keeps it fun for you is good.

Both …too good to waste

Nice hunt, Jeff. 👍 I think if I had curb strips anywhere it would be fun to hunt them. That's everything you dug? I too really appreciate the D2's tight discernment of targets, it's quite reliable, and your head gets to do the discrimination. Cool that nearly all the pull tabs were identical in shape, and that you did a "real world" test of SMF vs. SF. It all has a nice ring to it 😏 Congrats and thanks.

This is a good start to find places to go look: There’s some information that might be pertinent, his other videos may help as well.

And I also hope it’s not 0.72! But if it is at least our custom programs should migrate over during the update😀

I frequently experience vdi’s of 7 or 9 (never 8 ) with good non-ferrous tone. Some have been small iron with a small or thin non-ferrous, and some have just been very small iron with some symmetry In their shape. And that is regardless of tone choice other than full tones. Full tones just doesn’t know how to act or react yet. It’s like a hyperactive teen at his first job. However in Deep HC, small or large iron will false in both VDI and tone running stock discrim , but lowering the descrim will make that same target false in tone but read a 7 or 9 VDI. I haven’t noticed that in any other program, but I haven’t dwelled too much on it.

Heavy is the head that wears the crown. Steve. You have created a wonderful place for us to learn and exchange ideas. I for one have learned a great deal here. Do what you need to do to make things run smoothly and with less stress for you. As long as I get to stay😇

16 DD Coil 948g SC 188g = 1136g (2.504 lbs) 16 Mono 766g SC 188g = 954g (2.103 lbs) 13 DD 750g SC 156g = 906g (1.997 lbs) 13 Mono 598g SC 156g = 754g (1.662 lbs) 11 DD 518g SC 74g = 592g (1.305 lbs) 11 Mono 424g SC 74g = 498g (1.098 lbs) Coil Bolt + Two Rubber Washers = 10g (0.022 lbs) Garrett Axiom 16”, 13”, and 11” search coils, both DD and mono

Wow, the 13" mono is only about 50 grams heavier than the ML 11" 6000 mono and I thought they really went to town trying to make the lightest coils possible, yet Garrett has a bigger coil that's barely heavier. Impressive, especially if build quality is better.

Sounds like a good plan Steve.----Thank you for your efforts & this great forum---we appreciate you.----------Del

I like the idea Phrunt has of using a gold monster with the little 5” coil and a very short rod as a mini pin pointer, or try using a Garrett carrot or other good pinpointer, it may help.

As a rule nuggets tend to stay centered. Nails and other elongated ferrous targets will often move, since in reality they are like two targets, like a bar magnet, with a signal off each end. Long story short I rarely see a nugget do that, but a weird nugget type or ground/hot rocks could certainly do it.

Mr. OzGold; I have found the 7000 to be unequivalebly the most horriblest, obnoxioustest detector I have ever used for pin pointing. Add to that the fact that it can act goofy around clay and you are working under water where it is probably difficult to see what you are doing I believe the best solution to your problem is to accept your fate and continue forth with good humor.