The importance of the iron grunt

tnsharpshooter was asking a couple of question's and it got me thinking of the way I hunt ...

Now it might be common knowledge to alot of people ...But alot of people are just starting out...

The detectors that allow you to hear disc'd out target's (i.e. iron) as a low tone are an invaluable tool for us the hunter to use to our maximum benefit..

I am not talking about the ability to find habitation site from centuries past ( Which is important in it's own right) but the ability to hear targets you would not normally hear in a single tone or even a 2/multi tone with iron discriminated out....

Why hear iron well it's the lowest end of the conductance scale on the detector.. say 0-40 range is iron...say you block out 0-40 but still run tone's or even a single tone...well you are oblivious to what's under the coil that you could be digging....never blank out the iron or ground noise if you can help it with the new full range discriminator's with iron tone......

you say well I listen to the iron and I know it's there so shut up Keith....Heck I have the tone break down to just shut up the nails...Say thats 0-17 now is grunting so I find alot more on the cutting edge of audio disc so thats all I need to know leave me alone...

Well you are right but just because your machine says it's iron why is it iron????????????????

here's a trick I use and it works quite alot more than you can imagine...

I am running along getting the iron grunt's good solid grunt's then all of a sudden I get a weak faint iron grunt....completely different from the normal solid iron grunt....

I start to dig that weak tone pull a few inches of dirt out of the hole and presto I all of a sudden have a high tone break in mixing with the low tone then alittle more dirt and bam a good target comes to light...

now deep iron will sound faint too but take a little dirt out and see if the faint iron tone becomes astrong iron tone ...If so your option to dig....I listen for sweet sounding ROUND mellow faint iron grunts for my exploratory dig's....Some times with the right calculated sweep speed you can get a tinge of high tone in the middle of the faint low tone even before opening up the ground...


So use the added info the iron grunt afford's..

Sure it's great for knowing where the hot spot's are at and even unmasking in dense iron but it also can be used to help dig DEEEEEP target's that are usually only got in an all metal mode....


I know I talk alot about digging deep ...Even the other day I mentioned the deep bullet I dug with the X-Terra with the 5x10 coil...some probably scoff at the depth claim's...but I should also mention that bullet did not sound like anyting but a nail on the first approach...it was not till I played with it an dug some dirt out of the hole that I was awarded a piece of American History..

So yes the iron grunt is invaluable to me especially on these high performance machine's we have now day's


alot of peole say the t2's and f-75 call alot of target's iron in the ground and they do...But learn the iron tone's...they are nuanced also..same goes for the DEUS...GMP...Gold Bug G2 well you get the pic!

Another added deminsion if you learn it...

You can dig deep with alot of detector's and stay on a level playing field you just have to figure out how to get the depth out of the machine of your choice...

Keith



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/29/2012 02:47AM by Keith Southern.

Good solid advice there Keith. Here is a post I made several months back on the FM G2/Gold Bug forum regarding the same thing:

My hunting partner and I were hunting a CW site in Tenn that we have pounded over the past 2 years I was using my G2. The ground, although mild in mineralization (GB at 55) was bone dry and rock hard. I got a very soft faint signal that 3/4's of the sweeps would give the high tone with numbers bouncing from 60's into 80's and 1/4 of the sweep's would register in ferrous range (below 40). BTW I always run my disc at 40 so I can hear EVERYTHING...why, in just a minute. I have found that when about 3/4 of sweeps are low tone and 1/4 are high tone it is almost always iron. But when it goes the other way percentage wise...it's a good deep target.....the key is the tones are faint. Anyways, I called my buddy over who was hunting with his Tesoro Vaquero supertuned and let him listen to my G2 on the target...I told him "this is a good relic". He swung his Tesoro across it and was getting only an intermittant crackling signal. He told me "I would never dig a signal like this" It was an eagle cuff button back at 5". Remember ground was super dry and hard.
Two days later after a heavy rain, I was hunting a woods CW site where the ground is kinda bad (GB at 73). I was going really slow and received the faintest signal you could ever get and still be an audible signal. but here is the kicker...it was repeatable back and forth but reading as iron. Now it has been my experience that iron signals, even deep, are fairly loud due to halo. This signal was super faint and only giving low ferrous tones and TID's. I decided to investigate it, as last year I dug 2 69 cal round bals not more than 2 feet away. I cleared about 2" of earth off and re-swept....now it came in with soft faint high tone. It was an Enfield bullet at 8" standing straight up and down in heavy minerialized ground. Hope this helps everybody. Bill

Thanks for the input Bill...

I know it's old hat to some but it can help...

Thanks for giving a real world instance....

Just a few years back we had to hunt all metal then cross check with disc to get where we are at now with the simple yet often misunderstood iron grunt feature..

This is better than we have had....all metal is still alittle deeper in some instances but we are getting close with all the added info we now recieve on the disc side..

Keith



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/29/2012 03:28AM by Keith Southern.

Good stuff, Keith.

Very good thread. Agreed with everything!! I will take it a step further and say that the person who learns the all metal side of a machine will also benefit from being able to pick deep non ferrous things out from iron. Certain machines are better at it than others too.

Nice post Keith and good reply Bill. I haven't dug many fainter/smaller iron grunts as you described them. Then again I haven't had a T2/Omega in a while. I'll have to check those faint small grunts out on the CTX's combine mode. I do notice that the 50 Conductive mode on the CTX falses a lot and the Combine mode doesn't BUT the Combine mode does indeed register some good targets as iron (pick your poison) - I found that out by cross checking signals found in 50 Conductuve. Very very small percentage that do so (and mostly smaller targets I notice, like small pins), so you gave me something to think about here and apply.

It has taken me a while to realize it, but since I like hunting for those deeper coins I try not to look for those super sounding deep targets. I seem stuck at 9" in my soil with the CTX but have to dig more of those signals you are now mentioning as I know there are deeper coins there. (Interesting note, I have recently dug two pull tabs that hit fine, albeit fainter, one at 10" and one at 11"! It was sort of a success for me.)

Thanks,
Albert

Great tidbit Keith. I will often take a new unit and play with it , using different targets. It is important to me to know when the high tone drops to a grunt, what depth or distance from the coil.
All detectors will do this to some degree. Newer digital units will loose the VID first, it is also good to know when this happens. Of course this will vary depending on setup and soil conditions.

Thanks for the reminder

Tom in SC

Yes audio variances are there from high coin down into iron and those that are able to pick them out get the ones others miss. One local digs his share of iron with the Explorer but get some nice silver also and those that learn their audio well in their particuliar unit excel..Sure meters, imagers, analyzers, tones etc. are nice but those that use their ears
add another facet to recovering the good targets that sound bad to others. Having used many units over the years know iron to a experienced ear just sounds different and you certainly won't learn it overnight but its there to be learned with trips in the field and do expect some iron to be in the pouch along with a nice silver coin or perhaps a button or buckle as its not an exact science...

Posts like this is what the newbies-like me- need to read and enjoy. Getting these experienced vet detectorists to open up and explain different scenarios is great. I would love to see more. A very unique great forum to say the least. Mutual respect and good taste of posters seems to run through and through.

I think Keith explained it better than I did. I have been detecting for close to 30 years, but just discovered this earlier this year. On todays machines when hunting in disc mode and a target is at the extreme fringes of detection, first the TID numbers begin moving around (I have seen them go higher and lower) then they go into ferrous range with the corresponding iron tone ID. Keith described it spot on...the signal will be iron but with a different tone to it than a true iron target....soft and round. Since discovering this I have went back to my "hunted out"spots and went very slow listeningfor just these type of iron signals and could not believe how much I left in the ground that was good targets. Although I hunt with a G2, I have experienced the same with an Omega, T2 SE and have heard from friends the same is truewith the F75.Bill

sekypaleo Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I think Keith explained it better than I did. I
> have been detecting for close to 30 years, but
> just discovered this earlier this year. On todays
> machines when hunting in disc mode and a target is
> at the extreme fringes of detection, first the TID
> numbers begin moving around (I have seen them go
> higher and lower) then they go into ferrous range
> with the corresponding iron tone ID. Keith
> described it spot on...the signal will be iron but
> with a different tone to it than a true iron
> target....soft and round. Since discovering this I
> have went back to my "hunted out"spots and went
> very slow listeningfor just these type of iron
> signals and could not believe how much I left in
> the ground that was good targets. Although I hunt
> with a G2, I have experienced the same with an
> Omega, T2 SE and have heard from friends the same
> is truewith the F75.Bill

I wonder if this is true as well on the FBS machines? I notice on fringe depths I get a "thunking" sound - which generally means it is barefly picking up the target. At that point you can give it more sensitivity, if there is any more, and clean it up. The crosshairs do indeed jump around on the E-Trac but not on the CTX when in ferrous coin mode.

Yes albert there's tricks to digging deeper with the FBS unit's....

The thunking sound you mention is right on the edge of depth......go alittle further deeper and even if you have a wide open screen you will get a null on the Etrac..I know you have heard it...pay attention to the null a quick abrubt null with hard edges is a target good or bad ,can say but it's right out of the I.d. zone...pull some dirt out and the thunk will start then get some more out and when you get to a solid tone you will know if it's iron or not.....

The Explorer does not act like this though....the explorer will give little tiny sounding tinkerbell hit's, they are the hit's that some will dismiss as hot rock's/deep nails aslo have this sound and they well may be but they have a different sound than a hot rock/ deep nail if you listen carefully...more of a ringing tinkerbell sound than a mono tone faint high hit...

Thats the difference in the Etrac and the Explorer...the etrac will null those target's thinking they are mineral...

Thats why people like the Etrac more than the explorer..it runs quiter in bad ground....

BUT the people that really know how to inch the last bit out of a explorer know the deep ringy "HOTROCK" signals can be something else to a tuned ear...

The etrac is a just a smidge less deep when you are operating in the fringe zone...

any other time they are equal solid tone vs solid tone but the Etrac is quiter so it get's the nod..

And to be honest you cant go around chasing the nulls unless you get really really proficient in hearing the way the null start's and stop's..

And you have to be in a clean area to get the most out of it...

I have ran the 3030 but I did not get enough time on one to learn the subtlety of the deepies...I believe the CTX will null on a hot rock though on wide open screen? Am I wrong?

Keith



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/29/2012 07:30PM by Keith Southern.

Thanks Keith, that was good.

Well, I have that little strip I haven't really been able to pull more deeper targets lately from on the CTX. So, I'll go back there and run the unit in Combine with an open screen. There is a lot of iron in general in the ground here in Europe, so I'll see if I can make sense of the nulls, if they aren't too many and sharp as you say. Also, I am going to try Noise Cancel channel 11 and look for those 1-50 signals a poster here mentioned (for some reason that channel goes deeper - I think cause it is the lowest freq but not sure why it gives deepies that 1-50 signal.) Also, I'm wondering why I dug a 10" and 11" pull tab but never any coins that deep. Of course the pull tabs hit lower, like CO of 23 ish. I did get an 8" gold ring in this spot (102 years old!)- that was impressive, soft hit, but solid.

I actually don't know about hot rocks and where they hit - I do think they null. There aren't tons of them here, found a few with the Deus but once I learned the sound they stood out - what a vibrato.
I notice a poster said he dug hot rocks with an 11-38 signal on the CTX but he said they sounded different. A mod (and others) said he got them when manual GB'ing.
I claim ignorance due to the machine doing the work for me, oops.

Thanks again,
Albert

Thats one thing I wonder on the 3030 Albert...Does it null on certain ground even with a wide open screen...

the etrac does the explorer does not......I wonder about the 3030...

If the 3030 hit's on/falses on rocks and such it very well might be a deeper machine than the etrac and even an explorer...

A good thing to do is carfefully dig a hole and place an object just at the outer reach of the 3030 whatever that might be..maybe a 12 inch dime...then play with that target with a wide open screen and see if you can get something to happen to the treshold...be carful though dig it too deep and you want get nothing.. get it right on the edge of depth of the 3030 when runnign wide open then see what it does,,,

Null/Ring/Blip

that will let you know what it is doing on the outer fringes of depth and will let you know what to listen for in cleaner areas where target's are sparse but deep.

Good Luck
Keith

Agreed! I run my Garrett AT-Pro in PRO mode with zero discrimination(00-40) and Iron Audio OFF. I hear the iron grunts, medium tones and high chirps/bloops/beeps. I used to run 40 or 25 discrimination, but I went back over that ground with zero and found alot of older pennies I missed before. Hearing everything is the way to go.

It's out there fellows! Go get it!
"Ged Peacehavens"