Is Beach Detecting Just Easier?

[2Valen]

3 hours ago, Steve Herschbach said:

I may not tune up perfectly but I do keep the coil under complete control at all times. If anyone was to ask me why I am doing better than somebody else, it's methodical hunting and coil control, not magic settings.

I will have to do this more often as I  am guilty of not being as patient as I should be.

I am on this forum to learn as much as I can to improve my skills and learn my new 800.

Time will tell if I can master the tools I have, both equipment and person.

[Norvic]

Just reading your posts, maybe I`m dead wrong but you seem to have plenty of theories as to what your doing wrong, your jumping around with these theories, for eg in your last post

1 hour ago, mn90403 said:

It must be the mineralization I can't handle

Throw all theories out of the mind, the 10000 plus I`ve had just lead me up a "creek in a barb wire canoe" over the years, they serve very little purpose except each one gets you jumping around like a jack rabbit. Banish doubt from the mind when detecting, gold most certainly in flogged patches requires the mind 100% on coil control and on hearing. But you`ve got lots of gold before, you must`ve had your mind tuned then. I`m giving you a serve again, go get it MN you can and will.?

[klunker]

5 hours ago, fredmason said:

Your jack rabbit style

 

3 hours ago, Steve Herschbach said:

No patience, moving too fast,

You all might have a point but I invented adult A.D.H.D. (Attention deposit Hyperactive Disorder).

[mn90403]

There are some parts of this that get irritating.  It is more than just me and MY STYLE.

How many times do I have to go back to the same patches and not find anything and I know others have been back to that same patch and they don't find anything either?

Steve's point is well taken. Get over every spot in a patch and use careful coil control.  He finds missed nuggets in known patches.  My 'holy grail' will be when someone is on a swing with me and they say "Didn't you hear that?"  And I'll either say what or yeah and they will say ... "That could be a nugget, investigate it!"

Screamers I hear, even SOME faint ones ... subtle small and deep breaks are not stopping me.  JP is starting to chat about those sounds on his thread.

[flakmagnet]

Don't be irritated. That's why I included the story of that gent just randomly sticking his detector into a bush and hitting a big one…there is so damned much luck involved. Refining technique is only so we can take advantage when luck provides an opportunty - in my opinion.

[2Valen]

6 minutes ago, phrunt said:

Why do we put round pizzas in square boxes

Because it is so much cheaper to make a square box than a round one.

Have you ever tried to eat a whole round pizza before, you have to wipe the sauce off your face to many times.

Hope I cleared that up for you Simon.

[mn90403]

4 minutes ago, flakmagnet said:

Don't be irritated. That's why I included the story of that gent just randomly sticking his detector into a bush and hitting a big one…there is so damned much luck involved. Refining technique is only so we can take advantage when luck provides an opportunty - in my opinion.

I think most everyone says the gold is getting smaller at these patches.  There would also be less trash.

Can't we have some suggestion of how much more subtle the targets get?  Maybe I can't hear some of them but I think my volume controls and SP01 should put me on to those sounds if I'm listening for the right thing.

I've heard Bill Southern and Kevin Hoagland at the GPAA shows talk about that bee of a threshold for a long time.  They use that to their advantage.  Then the Monster came out without a threshold.  I've spent days out in patches with my 800/6 only and someone else had a Whites and we found lots of bbs but no nuggets on that trip.

Maybe it is just time.  Most of the time all of us are not finding gold either.  We are in between digs.  How long does it take to dig 3 or 4 tiny nuggets in a day?

It doesn't take me that long to dig targets on the beach lately!

[DigsAlot]

So I have a couple points to make Mitchell and Steve.

1. Beach hunting is way way easy. Most items of worth on the beach that we dig are big and loud, they are made of some of the best sound generating materials; their shape also helps to sound off. Plus, as you stated Mitchell, the ground is far more conducive to hearing a solid target. This being all very obvious too us as a group, there is a skill set to locating hot spots and grid hunting. You seem to have that solid.

2. Steve is correct about the approach he takes. I would counter that this approach is not always the best first approach however.

Let's take a look at an example. You have a desert wash that has gold from top to bottom, 2 foot ball fields long and 4 feet wide. Most of this wash only has a few inches of overburden. This wash has nuggets in many sizes, from .10 gram to 5 gram with many in the 1.5 gram range.

The draw back to Steve's approach which is not wrong, is that it leaves all those BOOMERS sitting there waiting to be picked off by someone that does a quick scan. Steve will clear the whole wash in one pass correct, leaving nothing behind; but it could take weeks to do that. But he might also lose those wonderful big ones to someone else. I take a different approach to patches at the start. 

I would, in the example above be moving in patch hunt speed. Which means cover blue sky ground at a med speed. Looking for a Nug or clear signs that one should be present. Once I hit a Nug I drop down to search speed, which is a slow/med speed, doing 10 foot circles at clear speed (slow) around each nug found. It would let me clear the wash from top to bottom getting the boomers and giving me a solid picture of the whole patch. After the above is done, ergo easy pickings cleared. I then switch to Steve's slow grid approach. That is when I start clearing all those hard to hear .10 gram Nugs. Starting at the bottom and working to the top of the wash.

It comes down to mining math= Ground covered is gold earned and questions answered. Both are equally valuable. As they both help you find gold.

I call my clearing style on a patch the onion approach= clearing layers.

Best part of this hobby is there is not many truly wrong ways to hunt. If you are in gold areas and your coil is touching the ground, not waving in the air. Then you are detecting in a way that will find gold. Other styles net more and some net less. 

An old miner told me once, that he only has so many ups and downs in a day and he spends them wisely. Sound advise.

 

I would offer you this advise Mitchell. Get a hearing test done as part of a medical check up. When you do the test don't guess at the sounds, only mark ones you are very sure you hear. Get a detail break down of that test. It will tell you what frequency you hear best at. Then set your Zed target noise to that frequency level. This might help you tune into those faint noises. This would ensure your unit is set to your precise needs. Happy hunting.

[mn90403]

I've had a hearing test a couple of years ago at Costco.  Of course they wanted to sell me a hearing aid but I didn't go that route.

My hearing is limited.  It is worst on the high frequencies.  I've also confirmed this with some of the online hearing tests.  I had a thread about that a few years back.  Let me see if I can find it and take the test again.

Mitchel