schoolofhardNox

Beach hunt #12 was a fun hunt with the Equinox 800. I really wasn’t in the mood to lug around the GPX, 🙄 so I opted to get reacquainted with the Nox. It was basically going to be a clad hunt with hopes of some silver or gold jewelry, but clad is all I got. 😌 Things are changing since the weather is getting colder and the hours of daylight diminish. I’m 2 hours away, so the time change hurts me more that the locals, which can get there at sunrise. All in all, it was a pleasure to swing that lightweight machine. Next week it will be back to the pulse machine for some deep iron. 😄

Can't beat that around here 😄 I'll just go back to admiring my crusty zinc cents now 😟

Thanks. These are all non water hunts. I rarely go near the water with the GPX. Even with the Nox, the waves will cause havoc with you. Unprotected beaches can be real mean 😄 I barely see anyone go any deeper than knee high. As for doing your places, you never know if the techniques I use here will translate to success in other areas. I always think I would do great if I ever went to nugget hunt in Australia or relic hunt in the UK, but the reality of it is I would probably struggle to keep up 🤭. One things for sure, my junk pouch would be full 😆 Thanks GB. I'm lucky that I can reach just some of the silvers that are hiding on these beaches. I have been over many of the same spots I found silver at previously and swore those spots were done for silver. It just shows that there are many smaller silvers that I could not get before for many reasons. Every time a section looses sand, I'm able to barely get some more silver. I dug a lot of ghost signals, but some of them turned out not to be empty 🥰. Yes, I dug some iron that had a coin with it about 5 or 6 times. Sometimes I heard the coin and the iron was off to the side, other times the nail was mostly centered, but the coin was off to the side. Almost all of the coin targets were very weak or sounded like ground noise. Some signals were ground noise and no coin, hence the ghost target designation. One things for sure, it's very hard for me to go that slow and not speed up. 🙄

Beach hunt #11 was at the same beach again, since I couldn’t think of another beach I wanted to take a chance on. I figured I’d try the walls again and maybe finish the day doing the grass section. I wasn’t expecting too much to be found by the wall, but I had a plan and figured I’d give it a shot. The ideas always sound better when you are at home thinking them out, but in reality they usually produce less than you thought. 😄 The wall I have been hitting did produce a couple more copper cents and one silver dime, so I moved to another section where I have found some silver in the past. This hunt was split using the small oval Commander DD coil from Minelab and the 12.5” coil from Detech. It was the Detech that pulled the rest of the silvers shown, as well as a lot of copper cents. But I must Minelab’s small oval coil did very well depth wise and was a pleasure to swing weight wise. I spent a bit of time clearing some big iron and nails to find the co-located targets that might be found. Probably 5 or 6 coins were in the same hole with iron, so I guess if you don’t mind digging, it pays off. In one small area, all coins come out brown, whether it be clad or silver. I thought I was just digging another clad dime, but it was a Mercury. Happy days. 😊Weather was absolutely beautiful, and I got my detecting fix for the week.

I tried too. I figured it looked like something Egyptian, but didn't get any images that looked like that kind of horse. Maybe a Pegasus? Beautiful ring though.

I think it is. 😊

Naw, the 600 was my buddies. He could hear bits of what sounded like falsing on the targets I showed him. I only called him over if there was a chance he may get a blip from his machine. On the deeper targets I know from my 800, I (and he) would not hear anything. This beach has produced 30 silver halves in the past couple of years for me. Others have found a lot as well. But they only come out when there is beach erosion or storm surges. Yup, that's a balled up silver chain.

That must have been a fun time. I always dream of hunting nuggets in Australia or the hammered fields of England. But I'm afraid I'd get skunked 😄 so I stick close to home. Boy gold nuggets do have their appeal 😍

Awesome hunt for both you guys. 😍That token is in great shape and the seated half is an "O" mint! You can tell the site has some age to it. Is that a Henry cartridge?

Beach hunt #10 was at the same beach I visited last time. I wanted to continue hunting the walls with the GPX, but with a smaller coil. I grabbed the Minelab 10x5” DD elliptical coil for the job. I met a buddy there and we compared signals with the Nox 600 and the GPX for a bit. I did well there considering I already pulled a lot of copper cents and 1 silver from there. The wall is about 50 feet long, so not a big area to re-hunt. Started finding some copper cents and some old spoons and 2 silvers, so I was already happy. When my friend left I hunkered down and very slowly hunted it again, trying various settings and ideas. It’s difficult since there is a lot of rebar in the wall, and you can actually see the ends stick out of the concrete a bit. The smaller coil definitely helped to find the rest of the silver, including a surprise half dollar. Also found a silver chain that was seized up with a trace amounts of iron rust holding it together. The zincs were found trying to find another similar area to hunt, but to no avail. So, I decided to hit the grass and do some high conductor hunting. I only had an hour of daylight remaining, and I wanted to see if I could find at least one silver left there. It took me a while to get accustomed to grass hunting with the pulse again, but I could not locate any silver. I may try to end the day there from time to time, just to see what’s left. A great day on the beach weather wise and more silver for the pile.

Awesome hunt! You got some nice relics and Spanish again 🥰

One helluva hunt!! I can't believe that no gold showed up either. Maybe there is another line lower that has more lead and possibly the gold. Either way, nice collection of jewelry and a fantastic coin total!

Lots of good stuff! you did a good job digging. A lot of rings too! Nice hunt.

I would guess that pull tabs and beaver tails will still be read the same by the Manticore. I don't know, that but I'm guessing they would. Until you can distinguish the "element" of gold from aluminum, it will always be the same. Aluminum tabs come in many different numbers. I just tried to do the same thing on my E Trac and found that many gold rings would have to be eliminated because they read the same as aluminum tabs. I have the E Trac, CTX 3030 and Equinox 800. The 800 is the worst of the bunch 😄 for target ID. I also don't think the target trace is going to be that accurate to see the shape of a pull tab vs a ring. Just my opinion with nothing to back it. Our only hope is that there is some bounce to the numbers for gold (doubt it) or some tonal quality that would distinguish them (doubt it again 😄)

Man that '75 Indian is gorgeous. I wouldn't use anything on that but a toothpick, dry only. The Virginia button is sweet too. Great stuff. The reins guide is a Terret, sometimes called a fly terret. The are a lot of discussions about what it's use is. From superstition and evil spirits, to keeping flies away, mimicking the shimmer of a flies enemy's wing, to purely decorative hardware. Nice finds.

That's a pretty serious tear. I'm wondering if swinging the machine moves that cable slightly and eventually causes that or if the material just breaks down after time. But it looks like it gets hung up somewhere until it tears open.

Awesome coin. Love Barber coins, especially a half 😍

Well, that was not bad for a beach that lacks targets. If those rings were gold, you would be out there again today 😄 I like the pulse units because they can bang out coins without hesitation. With VLF's it's a guessing game depending on the black sand content. I think you did well for hunted beaches. Not sure if you had a chance to do dry sand, but that can be productive as well. I usually put a big zip lock baggie on my machine so I can set it down on the wet slope and not worry about wet sand touching the bottom of the machine. Yep, the battery for the GPX is amazing. It will outlast most people when fully charged. The only time it ran out for me was when I didn't fully charge it. Nice to see a hunt from your side of the planet!

Beach hunt #9 was at a beach I have tried 3 or 4 times before. It’s an older beach, so there should be deep silver and wheats down there somewhere. I did 4 ½ hours with the Nox and was rewarded (heavily) with every possible size aluminum, that read almost every possible target ID. 🤬 I remember not liking this beach, but now I know why. I then moved on to my favorite beach which was close by and switched to the GPX. Tides were lower, so I hit a couple of areas of interest and scored a couple junk rings by the waves. But that is not area I went there for, so I headed for the concrete walls again. This time I swapped coils from the 14” to the 12.5”. That’s the smallest coil I had with me. I slowed way down and started to pluck targets and luckily, almost all trash was gone. The ratio of copper cents to zincs was great. There were no zincs at that spot. All the zincs came from the lower beach. At the wall it was all copper Memorials with only 3 wheats. This is the clad territory I had been hitting previously. It gave me one silver coin last time out, but this time it handed me 5. The thin silver chain was a bonus find that I discovered when I was sorting my trash. There were so many wire-like junk targets that I didn’t realize I has a chain. I just threw it in the trash pouch. I may head back there for a full hunt next time and if it doesn’t go well, there are other beaches I can get to rather quickly. Weather was still very mild and just happy to get out detecting! Always happy to do my part cleaning these beaches of trash..... except that first beach.....they can keep their trash 😄

Nice looking gold and a lot of targets for a short hunt!! 🙂

Awesome recovery!!!!!

😄 Yep, that is a fancy key. Never ceases to amaze me the weird items we can find beach hunting. It's odd, I've found more pairs of earrings lately than in years of hunting. They are always about 10-20 feet apart. Maybe a quick towel whip before they figured out their jewelry was in that towel 😲. No offense to our western partners, but if they want our sand, who are we to fight them over it. They can have it.🤭

Thanks. Our beaches are very different. Ours are eroding away, with sand being dumped back on occasion. "Sanded in", means sanded in only until the next storm or weird full moon. Some areas you are just inches from clay. On other more protected beaches there is more than enough sand 😄 I hope you do get the 5000 out and try for some deep stuff. What have you got to lose? 😉 Would love to see a hunt from your location with a 5000.

Beach hunt #8 was a return to the beach that spanked me good. 🙄 It’s a good beach and I didn’t want to leave it on a bad note, so I decided to head back there. I started on the grass section with the GPX to hunt high conductors, but the anti- interference coil would low tone on one sweep and high tone on the return sweep. Not really sure what that is about, but I will try a regular DD coil next time. Hunting low conductors (I dug a few) was futile, since it has been cherry picked for high conductors and there are a zillion pull tabs there. At least 2 or 3 targets per swing. So, I abandoned that and headed for the sand. I wandered a bit in the direction I wanted to go to for the day, and finally decided to try what I did previously – hit the concrete wall section. I picked a new concrete section and started hitting copper cents. This is clad territory, so I was going to basically hunt clad for the day. My hope was to find some gold, but I was willing to settle for zinc. 😆 Turned out ok and I did score some silver, so it was worth the drive. Still decent weather and a good workout as usual. Next visit will probably be at another beach, so I’m expecting lot more trash as I get used to that beach. Still, fun in the sun!!!

I believe it was.... I'm old enough 😄 Yep, the CTX is great on land but not that black sand. Even the Nox struggles in some areas. I only use the Nox if conditions just changed and things are shallow or are not in the black sand area. You can't beat the discrimination when you are the first one in a newly unsanded area. But when the beach gets sparse, the pulse comes out. Yep, Mines a Samsung but it folds, so the sand gets in the fold section. I carry a lot of gear on my belt so I just keep it in my back pocket. It had a otter case, so it's protected from sand other than the fold. I try and not pull it out, but keep it on for emergencies at home. I leave it in the car if I'm feeling like getting wet 😊