hi reddirtfisher. i had the same problems that you had. i hunt a lot of open fields and woods, so i don't encounter too many trashy areas. i noticed when the coil got wet - the 7" or the 10" - i would get a lot of falsing on the ends of the sweeps. i tried to wipe off the coil with a rag, tried raising the coil above the wet grass, but still got falsing... and lost a lot of depth too. it seems to affect many bh machines the same way.
with all those false beeps going on, it becomes a guessing game, and it's frustrating. high trash areas require a lot of patience using any machine, especially if your're just trying to cherrypick the site. sure, lots of people like the 4" coils, no problem with that, but i'll never own one.
i know this sounds silly, but check your batteries. in my pioneer 202, i have to insert them opposite of each other. if i don't, like a couple of times, the machine will go haywire and beep endlessly. a loose plug at the control box from the coil will do the same thing - they just luv to come loose. a dab of silicone stopped that problem. it takes the machine time to separate targets in a trashy area...hence the slow target response. a lot of machines are like that.
good luck, red. i went out and got me a tesoro cibola, and all those problems disapeared overnight. i still use the 202 on occasion and for backup, but only on dry days. hh,
I have owned a lot of different Bounty Hunter models like the Sharpshooter II, the Pioneer 505, and the Ranger Pro. It has been my experience that I get a lot of false signals all the time and the target recovery seems very very slow. Yes, I did turn down the sensitivity but it didn't help. Yes, I tried sweeping the coil a little slower. This is always worst in very trashy areas. Fast target response is extremely important in the trash. The 4 inch coil helps a lot but I don't want to use it all the time. What has been your experience with this? Is there anything else I can do other than just switching to another brand? 
