Survey: Whats Your Main Detecting Environment

[relicmeister]

As the arrival of the Equinox nears I know what forum I will coming to as we start using  the Equinox in our main detecting locations. I'm curious what types of detecting environments people on this forum detect in. For myself I do a lot of woods hunting, celllar hole hunting with emphasis on colonial relics. I hunt fields whenever possible, and like to detect old parks and private permissions. Many of my best sites are iron/ laden and I'm hoping the EQX 800 will help unlock the finds I'm sure are still there. 

[Mark Gillespie]

I hunt old home and school sites.  Schools long since shutdown and homes no longer occupied.  I have several special sites I hunt with my TDI where coal was used for source of heat for decades.  These sites are basically a wasteland (because of the coal waste )where grass and other vegetation is sparse.  But the TDI has pulled a many good target from these sites.  I will be very interesting to see how the E. does and reacts to these extreme ground areas.

 

[Steve Herschbach]

I normally hunt the deserts of Nevada and the northern Sierra Mountain region looking for gold nuggets. My main machine for Nevada is the GPZ 7000.

California, there are many old mining sites that were occupied by large numbers of people in the late 1800 to early 1900s and later. There may or may not be much wood left, but nails and old steel can fragments are littered about in huge volumes. And often quite deep in fully material. It stands to reason some of the best remaining large nuggets are in that deep stuff, but the odds are vastly higher it will be a large square or can. A GPZ can punch 2-3 feet on a can. Easy.

There are the forested areas; I swear every one has been logged in the last 150 years. Slivers off old drag cables and even cable style bulldozers, etc. left tiny ferrous bits all over the Sierras. No matter how isolated the location, if miners or loggers were there before me, trash abounds.

For blue sky work up there I need to be able to cover ground efficiently, and I can’t do that if I have to stop and retrieve some small ferrous thing from the bottom of a foot of duff, and have to do it every ten feet.

So a main focus for me is the idea of using the Equinox 12” x 15” coil on a properly balanced shaft for use as a way to not only cover ground, but get some serious depth in cobble piles. I hate spending an hour in a cobble pile to recover a can from 2 feet in a cobble pile. The hole caves in six times before you get to your target. Cobble pile work can be unsteady and dangerous, and so an easy handling lighter weight detector is preferable.

Plus I know I can snipe small gold with the Equinox if I am in the mood. Better yet, I can hunt silver with it when I get home at local parks. And hunt up at a Lake Tahoe. And Hawaii or wherever I get to next - maybe just the coast a few hours drive from here.

I am honestly tempted to put all my other detectors on hiatus for a year, even my beloved GPZ 7000, and spend 2018 doing nothing but use Equinox. No particular reason except that it just sounds fun, and would force me to get out of my comfort zone and focus on something else. True story is the reason I have never found a gold coin yet is a little bit bad luck, but mostly because I simply am not looking for them. I generally can find what I set out to find, but that almost always means “gold nugget”. I’m feeling like maybe it’s time to knock that bucket list item at a time when I am all fired up and raring to go with Equinox.

I would be lying though if I said I really think I could go through the year not using my GPZ 7000 - that’s just crazy talk! 

[Mtwolf2270]

My primary focus is relic hunting in particular civil war relics. I am also an old coin guy here in Tennessee we do alot of old homesites and farm fields. I do travel several times a year to Culpeper, VA as I am part of an organized hunt group. I also do alot of river and lake hunt during the summer and alittle beach hunting as well. I use the gpx 4800 alot when relic hunting but I can see the nox as my primary homesite, water machine and filling a huge gap when hunting relics iron patches and trashy sites that were civil war camp areas.  I hope the equinox will perform better in mineralized ground where vlfs and fbs struggle. Here in Tennessee we have moderate mineralized soil and the ctx is sometimes hampered here. I am planning on the equinox and gpx 4800 being my arsenal and thinning out detectors.

[deathray]

Hunt 1848 to 1860 mining camps in the sierra foothills. Every now and then I poke around for gold . I' d love to see you get that gold coin Steve!

[GB_Amateur]

My primary hunting grounds are public properties with old histories:  public schools and municipal parks.  One trick I've learned is that just because a park was established recently or a school was built recently ('recent' meaning the clad coin era) doesn't mean there aren't old treasures there.  3 of my 4 favorite sites meet this clad era description but all of them had human activity going back to the pre-clad days, and I've found old coins to show that.

I'm counting on the Equinox being a master target unmasker.  I suppose there are exceptions, but most places where old coins are hiding have trash buried with them.  People didn't just drop coins and keep the trash in their pockets!

[Daniel Tn]

On 1/6/2018 at 5:34 AM, Mtwolf2270 said:

My primary focus is relic hunting in particular civil war relics. I am also an old coin guy here in Tennessee we do alot of old homesites and farm fields. I do travel several times a year to Culpeper, VA as I am part of an organized hunt group. I also do alot of river and lake hunt during the summer and alittle beach hunting as well. I use the gpx 4800 alot when relic hunting but I can see the nox as my primary homesite, water machine and filling a huge gap when hunting relics iron patches and trashy sites that were civil war camp areas.  I hope the equinox will perform better in mineralized ground where vlfs and fbs struggle. Here in Tennessee we have moderate mineralized soil and the ctx is sometimes hampered here. I am planning on the equinox and gpx 4800 being my arsenal and thinning out detectors.

This is ALMOST me to a T....even the part about being from Tennessee.  I mostly Civil War relic hunt but have taken on a big love for water hunting for jewelry in the summer months.  I used to also do the Culpeper, VA hunts but quit going due to the expense of the trip up there.  I'm looking for the Nox to be able to do the same thing as outlined in his post...iron patches and home site work, along with water hunting.  The one extra thing I will throw in is that I usually take 2 trips a year to the saltwater beaches and like having the multi freq machines just for that purpose.  I had a CTX up til a few weeks ago for that purpose and sold it in anticipation of the Nox. The CTX did not do well in my particular soil around here in fields and woods but on the beach, freshwater and salt water...I loved it.  

[Chase Goldman]

Based in Virginia, in spring and fall/winter, I like to relic hunt wherever I can in the mid-Atlantic region (mainly VA, WV, MD, PA, DE).  In the summer it is beach and park coin shooting and club hunts.  I am interested in the Equinox as an all-terrain, fast detector that will excel on salt beaches as well as in the highly mineralized VA farmland soil and everywhere else in between.  Because it is waterproof AND relatively light weight, I am interested in exploring backwood water relic hunting which is something that could be done with my Deus but you had to add a lot of claptrap to it to be able to dip it in water.

Even though I own a Deus, the Equinox excites me because of its Multi IQ capabilities AND fast recovery speed plus it is relatively light weight (about a 1lb more than the Deus), great price point, and waterproof as previously mentioned.  Though I own some Minelab detectors (Excal II which I picked up used but have used sparingly and a GPX which I use heavily, especially in Culpeper and the surrounding areas), I am surprised folks like Daniel above are already getting rid of their capable CTX's BEFORE getting their hands on an Equinox.  The Excal never really clicked with me for some reason (probably because it was TOO specialized for salt water hunting and I am also not a diver so do not need it to be as watertight as it is), as a result I will likely shed it when I can (either before or after the Equinox arrives).  But  Daniel felt the CTX really did the job at the beach, yet he still dumped the CTX BEFORE getting the Equinox.  That is making a definitive statement and leaving an impression on me (and why I asked about Equinox vs. CTX in another thread).

[Daniel Tn]

Ahhh but you can't really read a whole lot into my selling of the CTX because my motive for doing so is probably not what you're thinking it might be.  

A lot of my soil around here is very similar to the Culpeper soil.  And as you know, that soil shuts the CTX down.  The CTX was a niche machine for me.  I used it for freshwater and saltwater beach/water hunting, and that was it.  Some guys love the FBS machines for silver hunting but the trick for the silver cherry picking relies on great target ID. And that red dirt kills the ID.  Anything past a certain depth reads as iron, and this is no exception for the CTX.  So my use for a $2400 unit was just using it a couple weeks a year at the saltwater beach on vacation.  In freshwater it didn't really matter, as any of the waterproof single freq machines would be just as good.  The saltwater is where the multi frequency really shined.  If I lived closer to the beach and hunted it more often, I would have kept the CTX.  If I hunted areas with better soil where I could rely on target ID for coins, I would have kept the CTX.  But I don't, so the majority of the time, the CTX was sitting against the wall. I was also playing the gamble of used detector sales.  

I kinda feel like this Nox is going to be a big hit and because of that, I feel the demand for used CTXs is going to take a hit, therefore the price in which a used CTX can be sold will have to drop in order to make it appealing to buyers.  I wanted out of mine while it still had some warranty left on it and so I could potentially get the most for it.  That's it in a nut shell.  It might not equal a CTX in performance on saltwater, but I think it will be adequate enough for my few days worth of hunting saltwater beaches out of the year.  I do think it will excel in the iron sites, and in the fields/woods relic hunting...so I think that is a big plus for it that I could never do with the CTX.  I'm excited to try one for sure.   I got ahold of Van the day they were announced and told him I wanted one.  

[Chase Goldman]

Awesome response!  Yeah, there is a feeling the CTX and Excal value might take a bit of a hit after the Equinox catches on, so why not "get out of the market" now.  Lol.  Your reasoning for ditching the CTX is basically the same as mine for the Excal.  The Excal is a niche machine for me and just sitting around most of the time.  The big question for me (and you) is how well will the Equinox will perform in mineralized soil.  How deep can you positively ID a target (vs. the Deus in my case) and how can MultiIQ open up a site vs. just using a single freq machine like the Deus.  That is kind of a boom or bust proposition, but since I know I can reliably use the Equinox for these other activities (beach hunting where it should excel vs. the Deus no doubt, relic hunting in nominal soil, coin shooting, backwater relic hunting) then it isn't like the it becomes a niche machine if it doesn't prove out to be better than the Deus in mineralized dirt.  Thanks.