Gold I (almost) Ignored

[Jin]

"Beer Can sounds are my favorite"

Not for me, was detecting in an old dozed areas (red streak gully-  Dunolly) a while back. Thought it was futile to detect the dozed areas so I concentrated on the bits around the trees that the dozer missed hoping that something may have been missed. Put on the 18" Elite and went into normal timings with the gain flat out. I then got this great sound up against a half rotted stump. I should have known better as the ground was not that hard in this spot as it was around most of the other trees.  But as I went deeper it got louder so I kept digging. After 10 minutes I couldn't work out where the target was among the stump roots so came at it from the other side. It didn't take long to work out it was actually in the middle of the hollow stump. A little disappointed when a beer can appeared. 

[jrbeatty]

Ah! Jin. The old hollow stump again - - -

Even extremely experienced prospectors can get fooled sometimes. The late Jim Stewart once confessed to me how he wasted an afternoon chasing an excellent deep signal in the roots of a tree with one of his big loops - only to find it getting fainter as he went deeper.

Finally he looked up and saw a short length of chain wrapped around a large limb - - -

[Reg Wilson]

Dug a big hole at the base of a tree with the 7000, when I came to a large root. Dug around and below the root. Had a pretty major excavation which took some time to accomplish. In frustration I dragged out the GPX with a small coil to try and pinpoint this illusive signal. Discovered that the root was giving a signal on the Z, but nothing on the GPX. An annoying fault with the 7000 is that for whatever reason  it sometimes registers a signal from tree roots. That machine came very close to being modified with a pick.

[Northeast]

Been there a few times with the Zed, Reg.  It does love water filled gum tree roots unfortunately.  

And Jin, I've played the 'metal in a hollow tree' game before as well. 

All the fun and games of detecting I guess  ?

[geof_junk]

I was tricked by nature once. I got a beer can like signal at the base of a tree. It turned out to be a horse shoe about six inches above the ground the bark of the tree completely covered the shoe.

[Northeast]

You’re both right.  The Zed is super sensitive and it is simply reacting to the minerals. The bigger the root the more the reaction and the reaction would also depend on how much/what minerals are in the ground. 

I have only noticed it with gum trees/eucalypts as that is the vast majority of trees in our detecting areas but would assume other tree roots would have a similar effect. 

And yes, I would assume a higher frequency VLF (oxymoron) would hit quite hard on them at close range considering the minerals in our hand will set them off too. 

It’s only a minor side effect of the Super Duper Zed   ?

[strick]

7000 does the same thing over here in the Sierras on big roots. After a while you get the feel of it. Especially  after you have spent 30 minutes digging everything out from under a couple of them...

strick

[fredmason]

Barrel cactus and Joshua trees do that, but the signal is usually the same all around the plant...a sharper narrow signal should be investigated...you never know!

fred

[mn90403]

When I first got my 7000 I went out in the desert to Quartzsite.  There is a Saguaro cactus there which is the classic cactus of the desert southwestern United States.

I found myself digging around the bottom of one of those on my first or second day using the 7000.  I decided I didn't want to kill it or have it's 15 feet of height or over a ton of mass come down on me in the gully.  I found out later it was just the roots!

Mitchel