Steve's Law Of Target Depletion

[Steve Herschbach]

Steve's Law of Target Depletion - All good locations with high value targets will be detected with progressively more aggressive means until no metal can be found. When any location contains items of great perceived value, detector technology will normally be applied in reverse order of aggressiveness. First will be VLF discrimination "cherry picking". This will be followed by varying degrees of "turning down the discrimination" to dig iffy targets and then on to using the barest of ferrous/non-ferrous discrimination. This will finally be followed by "all metal" detecting to remove masking effects with either VLF or PI detectors. If the location is considered good enough all targets will eventually over time be completely removed until no detector is able to acquire a target. At this point a site may be considered "hunted out" until a new technology arrives allowing for more depth or ground separation capability, when a few more remaining metal items will be removed. The key concept is that since discrimination is unreliable, all metal items must be removed from high value locations in order to rest assured nothing has been overlooked.

Nugget hunters and beach hunters get right with the program. If a nugget "patch" is located it will be relentlessly pounded until no metal remains. Beaches survive to some degree by being a renewable resource but even on beaches the richer, older deposits of jewelry are worked out over time. Good relic locations can and will be subjected to the same attention given to nugget patches, detected relentlessly until no metal remains. The rule is that as long as you can find a piece of metal hope remains that good items can be found. If not you, somebody else can and will return until no metal remains. I have promoted PI detectors for all uses for this very reason for over 15 years now - see that last few paragraphs at www.losttreasure.com from 2005.

Most people consider depth to be problem number one, but for many areas target masking is by far the more serious issue. Until detectors can actually see through trash instead of blocking it out, even the smallest surface trash can and will block deeper adjacent items from being detected. Superb discrimination only gets you so far and ultimately the only solution is to remove the surface trash to see what lurks below. The only real limitation we face in this regard is in areas sensitive to digging holes of any sort, like a well groomed park. Even there, slow careful extraction of surface trash over time can reveal old coins missed by others for decades.

Beneath The Mask by Thomas Dankowski

[Roughwater]

1 hour ago, Steve Herschbach said:

all targets will eventually over time be completely removed until no detector is able to acquire a target.

I especially like the video I saw recently of a gentleman using a GPX to locate all targets in the worked over yard of a very old home and marking them.  Then later using a good VLF Detector to verify if the target was iron or not if possible before digging.  I suspect that would remove 95% of the good targets though there still could be some masking going on with the remaining iron but it would enable one to find good targets that the best VLF's could not hit.  I suspect the reason not all targets ID'd with the GPX were dug was to limit the amount of destruction to the yard by digging 12" plus inch deep holes.    

[canslawhero]

Lou's Theorm: For every VDI # (or range of #'s) you wish to dig, there will be an infinite number of misshapen (or not) pieces of aluminum to produce it exactly.

[Hard Prospector]

This is the first year (since I started detecting) that I've found more jewelry at the beach than nuggets in the desert. A possible trend? Time and effort will tell.

[vanursepaul]

Electromagnetic pre sweep