chasing 22s

Hunted with my F75SEupdate yesterday afternoon in a spot I'm finding some scattered CW. Dug an inordinate number of 22 cal lead bullets. Pesky, time robbers!
They all gave iffy signals,i.e., sometimes 2 way, sometimes not. Poppy, broken audio. Very jumpy numbers from mid 20s to mid 50s. Dug enough to pattern the signals, I think. This, in low mineralized ground.
But my question to the list is this: Do these type signals sometimes lead to good targets? IOW, can I safely ignore these signal types, or should I always dig?

And if you have a way of discriminating or eliminating these 22 lead bullets, what is it?

Thanks.

Pleasant Garden, NC
AT Max, Nokta Impact, MX Sport, Nokta FORS Relic, GPX 4800, Infinium, Racer, Deus, F75SE, Nautilus DMC II (order of acquisition, last to first)

Does an archeologist argue with a plow? A bureaucrat with a bulldozer?

You can tell by the size of them when pinpointing them.

I have a site along the retreat where the rebel army camped briefly to gather supplies that has tons of .22 rounds on it. Like you said sometimes they don't sound so broken and can repeat somewhere in the small button range. You can play with raising you're coil, if it still sounds faint as you get off the ground> shallow trash most likely. As you know USUALLY CW bullets are a good round repeatable signal. Off the top of my head a few "good" targets that could come in similar: Deep or on edge cuff buttons, percussion caps, friction primers, jewelry etc.

At the end of the day it's you're call. If time is limited I certainly understand wanting to maximize it. If you have time and can really milk the site; like the old relic hunters used to say dig everything that's not iron, everything.

There are no absolute guarantees of missing a good find when passing signals and not digging them. There are some things you can do to maybe put the odds more in your favor of not missing if you decide not to dig everything. Size, shape, and depth of target along with TID reading and what the TID reading does on different sweeps are clues. I usually let site date and history drive my decision making a lot of times in digging the more questionable signals. cheers

Seems that most of the older sites I get into are loaded with a variety of 22 and larger cal bullets. They only ones I really care about are musket balls and three ringers, those are almost always solid signals though. Depends on the site for me, I tend to dig the 22 and other cal bullets too for a while, as you never know, but their TID is typically jumpy, and depth readings are off (always say they're deeper then they are). If I'm in a time crunch I will skip them.

I've always wondered if a $1 US gold piece on edge would sound like one of these pesky 22 bullets?

Hi ncwayne,,,,you basically can't rob Peter to pay Paul.....You kinda answered your own question in regards to the characteristics of the 22's ...."Do these type signals sometimes lead to good targets?".....yes absolutely they can...........Good luck....JJ

Yes..... small gold jewelry, U.S. $1 Gold coins......... and U.S. 3-Cent nickels sound (including conductively) just like .22 bullets & brass. The 3-Cent nickel is 'coin' sized sounding (audible length).

I once got a V nickel that was fused to the back of a square nail that came in at a solid 18 on my F75 TID. I kept the V nickel and the nail

Hi Brian,,,,Tom has some awesome pictures on his home page relating to what you are talking about....JJ

Thanks, fellas; I think I'll keep diggin'em!

Pleasant Garden, NC
AT Max, Nokta Impact, MX Sport, Nokta FORS Relic, GPX 4800, Infinium, Racer, Deus, F75SE, Nautilus DMC II (order of acquisition, last to first)

Does an archeologist argue with a plow? A bureaucrat with a bulldozer?