Advice Needed On "new" Site; Sooo Much Trash!

[gordy5m]

Thanks everyone for the replies! I really appreciate it. Lots of great ideas to try here. There seems to be a consensus about "cherry picking" the higher conductors, but close to the house it's literally carpeted w/ old aluminum Budweiser cans and pop-tops (I think maybe they were collecting them to recycle? God help their livers if they werent!). The cans are shallow, crushed, and mostly whole, and ring in sometimes in the 50's on my Legend (reminder, the TID on the Legend goes up to 60). "Cherry picking" all those signals could literally take days to clear a few hundred square feet. I do like the idea of chipping away at the area, and I'm definitely going to give my new 6" coil (got here today, but it's raining 😞 ) a try with a faster recovery speed and lowered sensitivity. Really useful tip about raising the coil to see if the signal changes for ID. I'll definitely be using that one, although I think I'll end up digging a lot of stuff anyway to clear it out (the digging is pretty easy). I've been studying the historic areal photos, and I think I've mapped out the position of the house, barn, and pump house(?), so will be focusing hard on those in-between areas as well. 

 

Thanks again everyone for the warm welcome and great tips! Will hopefully be back w/ pics of my finds!

[Chase Goldman]

First off, I disagree from walking away from any site unless you are somehow time limited on access or if you have found NOTHING but junk after multiple tens of hours hitting it and/or if you really do have a real promising and proven alternate site to hit.  Having a place to detect that you have unlimited access to and that will keep you busy for several visits (even if it is not immediately producing), is a luxury and more valuable then even your detector.  Without a viable site, a detector is worthless.  If you have the luxury of time and some patience, then work your way through the aluminum and iron and get it out of the way.  If the place has been previously detected and if there are still treasures to be found, it is most likely amongst all that trash and you may have to pick your way through that trash slowly.  Pick out small 2-3 yard square grids and hit those slowly but relentlessly with that 6 inch coil.  You basically have to take baby steps to ensure your 6-inch coil covers every inch of ground in the grid.  Note that it is only within the past 5 to 7 years that reasonably priced detectors have been designed to quickly process signals under such conditions, which enables them to be less overloaded and be more likely to detect treasure hiding between the junk targets.  If the house has been hit previously, and there is that much trash present, then it is likely the previous detectorists did not have the equipment to handle the junk or were lazy or both.   It's tedious, but is more likely to pay off in the long run and you will really learn the language of your machine.

That approach will get tedious, so you definitely should also cherry pick the edges or the heart of the junk (doing the latter by discriminating out everything but high conductors as has been recommended).  Look for those hot spots that have been mentioned previously (walkways, entrances, gardens, outdoor meal areas, clotheslines (especially).  Look for accumulations of like targets to give you a clue as to what caused those targets to end up there - channel your inner detective.  Multiple coins and buttons might indicate where a clothesline was strung.  An isolated batch of cans, tuna tins, mason jar lids, foil, pocket knives or flatware or other similar items might indicate where and outdoor table of fire pit stood.  Toys (cars, cap guns) obviously tell where the kids played.  Miscellaneous machinery parts might indicate a barn, garage, or shop.  Groups of old nails and miscellaneous brass objects might indicate a long-since torn down out building.  Also, recognizing what is NOT there will also provide information.  If you are not finding old coins, especially silver, then it is a good indication the place WAS previously cherry picked.

Adjust recovery speed up when in high target density areas and also lower sensitivity a bit under those conditions because you are unlikely to hear deep targets amongst shallow cans, nails, and other large pieces of junk.  Lowering sensitivity works in conjunction with higher recovery setting to help keep iron and other large/shallow junk items from overloading the detector giving you a better chance of hearing relatively shallow keepers between the junk.

Anyway, as others have mentioned, you have a golden opportunity with this challenging site to hone your detecting skills, really learn your detector, and perhaps find something really special hiding in all that trash.  Just take your time and break up the monotony of picking through the trash with some "open field" cherry picking on the less trashy edges using your larger stock coil.  If you attempt to do that with your 6-inch coil while trying to maintain coil swing coverage (baby steps), it will take you forever.  The larger coil gives you more coverage per swing and also more depth where you can use it.

Good luck, happy hunting, and let us know how it goes.

[JCR]

All the above is good advice. Take your time & enjoy the labor of learning. After you get the beer cans out of the way the area will open up a good bit, then you can work the small Al & pull tabs. Try Park mode in 4kHz single frequency. It works well to tone down that kind of trash.  I have a site just like that with the   1900s house still standing. The last renters drank a lot of beer on the porch & threw the trash in the yard.

I found a Dallas Cowboys 1 ounce Silver round there. You just never know.

[strick]

Everyone has been very nice and thoughtful in their responses...and there have been lots of good suggestions. The beauty of the hobby is that we get to choose where we want to hunt...I recently watched a guy we all know remove about 10 pounds of nails out of a 4x4 foot area and still did not get them all out. Nothing ventured nothing gained as they say... The small coil and moving slowly will be your best bet. Use your boot to scrap the ground and move the shallower stuff. Slowly and over time you will achieve success...when you get sick of all the trash then go to a beach where you can take in a big breath of that ocean mist and clear your head. That is if you are in reach of one 🙂

strick