Greetings From The Great White North

[Druid]

Hello to all here on,
my name is Drew and my forum handle is Druid, I hale from beautiful British Columbia, Canada.
For the last several years I have become a big fan of the NokMak machines and use the FORS Relic & Impact frequently. That said, I am not a brand loyalist type and I take great pleasure in trying out different detectors from various manufacturers, I am open to all brands and love to experiment with, and test new and intriguing machines. I keep a core selection of the units that perform best in each of my applications and sell on the others after giving each a fair shake down. Yeah I am a detector head. I also enjoy following what others are experiencing with their detectors in their hunting grounds, and really like watching a number of individuals who produce straight forward, honest videos of live digs.
My first crack at detecting was with an old, (well, new at the time), Compass Judge 2 but at that tender age, (10), and without any mentors I just couldn’t get a handle on it and gave up. Looking back now I sure wished I hadn't dropped detecting as I really missed the boat in the 1970’s! By the time I resumed the pickings were considerably slimmer. Fast forward 26 years and the desire to hunt for treasure came back with a vengeance in the mid 90's. I bought a Garrett GTI 2500 and found, (A) a lot of shallow Canadian clad, and the odd silver, and, and (B) that the ground balance circuit in that unit at that time just couldn’t handle anything other than turf without overloading. Garrett tried any number of things to help, (great customer service by the way), but nothing solved the problem.
After seeing and reading a considerable number of the well-known Monte's Von Berry’s posts on various forums I nervously sent him a plea for some advice. Monte graciously sent me his usual, brief, succinct, 5 page email and convinced me to look at some other options. Long story short I took his advice and my detecting results picked up quickly from there with a number of different detectors, (thanks Monte!).
Now, many detectors later, and retired from my day job after 34+ years I am really just starting to kick into high gear and find that I am enjoying the hobby more than ever.
Reading the forum posts I realize that there are some of you on here I recognize from other forums. To all the others I hope to get to know you better.
I look forward to visiting here and will contribute where & what I can.
Cheers all,
Drew.

[BeachHunter]

Welcome to the forum Drew from SoCal. Great first (or 2nd) post. Best of luck!

[Steve Herschbach]

Great first post - welcome to the forum Drew!