A novel...but if this helps someone out there find something great the way I am doing it here it would well worth the time to read it.
I have had a little success lately in a site loaded with not just iron nails but all sizes of iron and other old metal from large to small using a way out of the box thinking method I tried just as a lark.
I wonder what the community here thinks about this method, is there a scientific reason it has been working for me, am I just lucky or is there something here that can be replicated by others....or would anyone else even want to try it this way?.
All opinions, explinations, theories or even smacks in the back of the head if you think I deserve it are welcome.
Saturated is a word that fits the profile of this difficult and challenging site.
This was an old farm house site, it used to be private and now it is within the boundries of a public park that has taken over the property.
Many have hunted here before, the site became public somewhere between 2019 and 2010, and I know for sure a few MD club members hunted here, very accomplished hunters, but all told me they tried it just once, the amount of iron and other metal here was just too much and as far as I know all of them moved onto easier sites after hunting this site only that one time.
Me, I am stubborn and crazy, and this site is interesting to me because of the pretty neat kinds of iron objects I am digging here, old parts off of tractors, cars, and things that were in or were part of the construction of the home including some cool brass pieces like this which is a high tank toilet fill valve that dates from the 30's to who knows how much further than that.
I dig these large signals because I have found tools and all kinds of other cool and unusual objects like that brass piece and also to get rid of at least some of the larger metel to see if it is masking something better.
We all suspect there is still some older coins and silver here, I believe the home was built here sometime in the last quarter of the 19th century, but it is so very difficult to get through all the signals and make sense of them to find them.
In many areas with the densest amout of signals it is very common to dig a small hole and in that hole could easily be 3-4-5 or more small nails, bits of rusty wire and other pieces of junk, not to mention other medium to larger nails and garbage and also the huge metal pieces that could be adjacent or under any and all targets deeper.
My soil is actually pretty good, I usually GB at somewhere from the high 40's to the high 50's at this site, one bar on the dirt meter, and it seems the older coin targets I am looking for are laying at approximately the 6" level here.
At sites with similar conditions and good targets deeper this method may not work at all, but here like I said, I am having some success.
I have not tried a few other techniques here with my F70 yet, hunting in disc just barely knocking out nails and using 4 tone, or zero disc and using mono tone, they might work at this site too for all I know, but this crazy way was just and experiment I tried first just because I was curious and it seemed to work so well that I continued to do it for the last few hunts.
I also just saw a vid from Gene Scully and his settings for hunting in iron with the F75 and he states that too much sense, too much power can actually cut your depth in at least those type of sites and that is something I did not know or realize so I have much more experimenting to do.
Curiously, messing around with all the settings just to see different results, good and bad, is way fun for me, almost as fun as digging up those great targets, and I will take time on my hunts to do this still even though I might leave a few extra targets in the ground when I get sidetracked to do this.
A bit more backgrond on me so you will have all the facts.
My beginner experience was with a lower end Bounty Hunter in my first hunting sites when I lived in Alabama that couldn't handle the super hot soil there at all.
Falsing to such a degree on just about every swing that was something that a beginner usually does not or should not have to deal with but I had nothing else and didn't know any better at the time about other detectors that could deal with that situation better so I just used it for about 150 hours till I upgraded to a Vaquero.
The boot camp experience with that noisy thing was actually frustrating but also a blessing in disguise because I had to learn to listen, really listen, to pick out the real solid and good signals from all the false ones...something I am still thankful for to this day.
That training helped me in learning my next detector, the Vaq, also a Compadre, and then one day I bought an F2 just a s a backup detector and I discovered I could run it on full power and still managed to learn to tell good signals from bad even though it was usually pretty noisy at most sites I hunted with some good amount of falsing coming out of that thing too.
I was very successful with that thing, and when I decided to upgrade again I went with an F70 hoping to get a bit more depth, better ID's at depth and I also hoped all the language I learned swinging the F2 would transfer over.
Not only the actual in your face language I learned but the hidden, between the lines, language and behavior I discovered I could comprehend which helped me find more and greater treasures than I would have believed possible.
I was very happy to learn that the F series language does transfer between the different models although the higher you go the basics are there but there is just much more language to learn.
When I got my F70 I experimented a ton, still do, and eventually started to hunt at several sites like the woods and even some parks at fully blown out settings...
AT, SL, Sense at 99, Thresh at 9, and even though all the noise and jumping I could and sometimes did get at some of my heavier EMI loaded sites I was still able to pick out the true, good tones and notice the more stable numbers that flashed on the screen that wer good and not false...if only for a brief instant.
Still a babe in the woods with this thing as far as I am concerned, but the amount and quality of my finds satisfy me as does the depth I am finding them at which is sometimes surprising.
So now My experiences at this site.
I have been here before many times with many detectors and coils and did find some larger iron objects like hand tools and such, even a few wheaties in one area that were relatively shallow, but never any silver or older coins which was always my goal.
The F70 had its first visit here with the large 11" DD coil mounted, but I found that so many signals hitting this coil at the same time no matter what settings I used from low to high just made it an unintelligible mess and no love on that hunt.
Then I came back with the F70 and the standard coil mounted this time and for some silly reason I set it up to hunt on those all metal maxed out settings just to see what would happen.
My hope and theory was to blast through any and all iron and see if I could notice any other signals that indicated anything else but iron, and then dig down and see what I would find.
The first hunt this way was surprising, almost shocking actually.
I had severe jumping on the screen and of course in the tones, also, but I listened for what I thought were the more solid tones and watched for any and all numbers that were higher than iron and seemed t be real even though on every swing there were also iron numbers and those low iron grunts popping up continuously due to the dense blanket of existing iron.
My check program was disc at 1, DE speed, sense at 85 and thresh at -1 and I was in 4H tones which is my more usual park hunting settings.
Every target I came across that I heard something solid in that threshold tone and also saw numbers that flashed by on the screen that were higher than 15 and seemed like they might be real if they repeated at all and showed up more than once I stopped and examined further.
I pinpointed to try to get the center of the coil over the exact area of the target, the coil just a bit off center of most iron here would always false into the higher numbers so I had to get the coil just right to give me more accurate information.
Once I found that spot I made several small side to side passes and listened and watched the screen closely for those higher number flashes ignoring the iron grunts and iron numbers that were also there in every swing.
Remember every hole I opened all day had some kind of target but also at least one if not more like 2 or 3 bits of rusty iron in it also so the iron signals were always there.
Many times the high numbers I saw went away when I got the coil right, and the numbers settled down into constant iron numbers that usually stayed within a 2 number jump if that.
I knew this was a true iron signal and moved on.
I also examined each suspected non iron target from at least one other angle if not 2 or more.
Many times those higher than iron numbers I saw were still there but they had completely changed to a new set of numbers than the first, usually lower.
These targets that changed numbers as I circled aroud were never coins because the numbers were never that high, but they did end up to be something other than iron so I was happy with that.
Eventually I did get some signals that were the kind I was looking for, not many in the higer silver coin ranges but higher than iron and stayed sort of within the same range as I circled and I dug some very good targets that also weren't iron.
Now let me stop here and explain about these higher numbers.
On my F2 after hundreds of hours I made a rule for myself that I was good enough and accurate enough, especially using the sniper coil, that I would rarely dig any signal that jumped more than 2 numbers unless I heard something sweet and solid in that tone.
This worked well for me and I found I could avoid about 80-90% of the trash out there which usually jumped more than those 2 numbers no matter what I did or how I maneuvered that coil and concentrate on digging the targets that stayed within my rule.
Those targets were comprised of the other trash that came in solid, there is nothing you could do to avoid that, and the rest of those solid signals which were usually good like coins and jewelry and relics which never jumped more than 2 numbers if they were within a 6" depth level.
When I got my F70 I could not stay within this rule at first...so much more power and so much jumping I dug all targets that strayed way outside my 2 number rule into 4-5-6-7 number jumps as I learned.
Eventually I got more skilled with all the coils and now my rule is in place again and slightly amended to be a solid diggable target is one that is within a 2-3 number jump.
Anything at major depth this rule does not apply, of course, all bets are off on those so I go by audio info more than screen info as I do on most targets I come across whether they are shallow or deep.
Now these higher numbers I have been talking about at this iron site did not stay within these rules at all.
At no time on any target that was not iron did I get any sort of signal or numbers that were stable and steady at that 2-3 number range.
Those higher numbers spanned an area of about 10 numbers, and even that sometimes went higher and lower or in a different way slightly changed, so insted of looking for a 2-3 number jump I was looking for similar blocks of numbers much wider.
If I kept seeing them on several swings, especially successive swings, even if those blocks of numbers weren't exactly the same each time I still dug them and on that first trip with the standard coil, and after many previous trips here as stated with other detectors and coils I found all this....
A small frosted glass handle from a drawer or cabinet from inside the house.
A burner from an oil lamp.
A very thick plate made of brass I believe with a western theme.
I thought is was off an old toy, but I have found out since that the last person that lived here was an old authentic cowboy so it could have come off of one of his personal possessions.
A complete antique victorian vertical rim lock from the 1800's and no later than the very early 1900's.
These are the kind of locks that those skeleton keys we always love to find fit.
The prize of the day was this 4" long insurance tag that used to be very popular to attach to license plates long ago.
I can't find any info on this long defunct insuance company anywhere on the web, I come from Detroit and I never heard of them so I assume this is very old.
Hunt 2 at this site with this new technique was with the sniper coil replacing the larger standard coil.
Again I wandered all over this site looking for silver, I used the same method as before but this time I was refreshed and decided to dig the more interesting iron signals too.
Some nice buckles, some odd and end iron you find on farms, and a very rusty small pocket knife were some of the keepers for that day.
Near the end of that hunt I wandered over to what I now know to be the front lawn of the property at an area close to the street.
This is where I got a signal with of ocourse iron bouncing in and out but this one also had some higher numbers I have not seen before.
That block of numbers mostly repeated from all angles, they did change slightly as I moved around the area with the coil but they usually stayed in the range between the high 70's and the mid to high 80's on the F70.
Copper cents and dimes on the F70 are usually in the 70-75 range, quarters would be more like 85, halves would probably be in the high 80's to low 90's and silver dollars which I would assume to come in at the low to mid 90's.
This block of numbers was in the high coin range, they did repeat enough from a few directions and I didn't think they were false high numbers from big rusty iron so I had hope.
I switched over to my check program and heard some very nice and pretty solid high tones and they didn't repeat every time but they did repeat most times and from other angles too so I opened a hole.
The depth on the screen when pinpointing said 6" so I started digging.
I got down to about the 5-5.5" area and scooped out som dirt and when I threw it on top of the little dirt pile I was building on the side of the hole I saw the glint of silver.
A 1917 merc...you could not take a picture of a happier man.
The Propointer in the hole says there are more targets.
I get up and swing the F70 over the hole and got about the same signal with iron hits and high numbers but this time the numbers were slightly lower in the 70 to high 80 range.
I dug another target and it ended up to be a pretty good size rusty nail.
One mre target to go and that one turned out to be a 1928 wheaty.
You could knock me over with a feather, and even though I dug all those other nice targets before and I was holding these 2 old coins in my hand from this hunt, it was still hard to believe this blast through high power technique actually worked in this iron mine.
The next trip I was on a mission to find more silver so I stayed near the area I found the merc but not a lot of time for this hunt and no silver, but I did dig up another pocket knife from about that same 6" depth level and it is in surprisingly good shape for being in the ground for so long.
Then I came back not soon after, I am lucky because this park is close to me so I can visit it whenever I have even a little time.
Back to the area the other coins were found, back to using the same methods and sniper coil and back looking for the same sort of signal and high sort of repeating numbers I saw on the hole with the merc and the wheaty.
Then it happened.
I got pretty much the same signal I got when I dug those other 2 coins a few days before.
Iron bouncing in and out, a block of higher numbers that pretty much stayed and repeated, but there was one difference in that this block of numbers were a bit higher than when I found the merc coin spill.
These numbers went from 83 into about 93, and immediately I hoped for, wished for, another small coin spill but this time hopefully with more than 2 coins in that hole with iron which would accout for those slightly higher numbers.
I even had a fleeting thought it could be a silver quarter or a quarter and another high conductive coin, but even 3 or 4 wheaties in the hole I was about to dig would have elated me at that point.
I again switched to my check program, again I got a very nice solid sounding high tone with those same high numbers that mostly repeated along with some iron grunts.
Again the pinpointer said 6"...all signs said dig this signal if ever there was a target I was fated to dig so again I opened a hole.
On the way down to that 6" depth I came across 3 small nails and a small piece of thin rusty wire of some kind.
I got near the area I needed to be and then I started digging way around the sides of where these coins were supposed to be...didn't want to scratch amy old wheaties let alone silver.
I was pulling of chunks of dirt and putting them on my towel at the side of the hole and then I went in with the Propointer and the signal was gone.
Evidently I already got it out so I started to run the scraping edge of the PP over the dirt and i moved a bit of that dirt off the top and then I saw the outline of silver...and it was BIG silver.
I grabbed it and looked and it was a walker...a coin I have never found before and one on my bucket list.
To find one with a date in this environment and for my first one ever turn out to be a half, well, lets just say I keep it next to my keyboard and it has been several days since this dig and I just can't stop looking at it and I can't stop picking it up to feel the weight.
So there it is guys, have you ever heard of anyone hunting this way in such an iron infested site or am I the first crazy person to try it and succeed?
Is there a scientific explanation for what is going on here?
Was I just lucky, even though I have now dug several nice targets on successive hunts?
I still want to try other methods with the F70 at this place now that I know for sure there is silver here.
I also want to refine and play with the settings I have been using with this method to try to stableize those numbers and tones even more and maybe make it a bit easier to recognize the good targets in all this mess.
Still, crazy or not, I consider myself a success at this site that has chased away several hunters in the past.
Never give up...Never surrender.
You can always find a way if you keep trying!
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/05/2014 08:24PM by diggwr27.