Does wet soil help or hurt?

[WoofWoof]

With all this rain we had in Pennsylvania, does the wet ground help or hurt in field relic detecting?

 

[GoVidGo]

Helps for sure.... detecting, digging, and filling in plugs/cuts...

fellow Pennsylvanian here.... Indiana, PA

 

[scubadetector]

You will find deeper objects in wet soil also.

 

[BarberBill]

Every reference I've seen implies it favors the finding of targets. It definitely helps in retrieval/plugging etc. At least until it gets too muddy.
BB

 

[Sailorman]

One of my best finds was in a spot I'd hunted several times. The only difference was it was wet!

 

[Ism]

Here's my simplified take from years of reading posts and personal experience. Wet soil allows for better depth in fairly clean areas. In areas with high trash and iron, it can have a negative impact. The halo effect around iron is more pronounced giving the iron object a larger footprint thereby masking good targets that would be seen in dry soil. The better depth you will achieve in wet soil also magnifies the signal from the trash (again giving trash a larger footprint) overwhelming many good targets that would be visible to the detector in dry. Also to be considered is the mineralization of the soil. A good example of this to the extreme is salt water beaches. In the dry-semi-dry beach sand, great depth is achieved by a VLF detector. But in wet sand the depth is greatly diminished because of the high concentration of conductive salt minerals. This is why I believe that some people claim better depth in dry soil and others in wet. It all depends on your style of hunting and location.

 

[Lipservice]

Here's my simplified take from years of reading posts and personal experience. Wet soil allows for better depth in fairly clean areas. In areas with high trash and iron, it can have a negative impact. The halo effect around iron is more pronounced giving the iron object a larger footprint thereby masking good targets that would be seen in dry soil. The better depth you will achieve in wet soil also magnifies the signal from the trash (again giving trash a larger footprint) overwhelming many good targets that would be visible to the detector in dry. Also to be considered is the mineralization of the soil. A good example of this to the extreme is salt water beaches. In the dry-semi-dry beach sand, great depth is achieved by a VLF detector. But in wet sand the depth is greatly diminished because of the high concentration of conductive salt minerals. This is why I believe that some people claim better depth in dry soil and others in wet. It all depends on your style of hunting and location.

Totaly agree! Wet soil 'enhances' iron signals by making their halo more conductive.

 

[scubadetector]

n/t

 

[Critterhunter]

For sure, by my experience owning many machines over the years, wet ground allows you to get deeper/better signals. Two of my deepest coins (about 11") thus far were dug in ideal wet ground conditions and gave perfect signals, even though the stock 10" round coil I was using is not as deep as my 12x10. Just haven't hunted that known deep coin spot yet under wet conditions to see how much deeper I can punch it with the 12x10. In head to head comparisons though I know the 12x10 is deeper, so I look forward to future wet soil hunts there with it.

Conversly, I believe too wet of ground can hurt you and cause less depth. In my experience if the soil is so wet that the hole begins to fill with water when you dig it, detection depth seems to suffer. I suspect the water, and minerals mixed within, starts to disperse the detection field, rather than enhance it via the ground just being moist but not soaking wet filled with water.

Whenever comparing rule of thumb depths for a machine and given coil, keep in mind that even if you own the very same machine/coil, in your soil the depths might be deeper or shallower due to mineralization. For example, in my soil it's a feat for the best of machines to squeek out about 8" or so on a silver dime under dry conditions. Often that deep or deeper and it's never a perfect coin hit, unless the ground is in an ideal state of moisture content. I almost gave up on the two 11" coins (one hole was a V-nickel and in another hold a indian) because when I still hadn't found them, I suspected they were large pieces of junk to be giving me such a strong and perfect coin hit at those depths that day. Glad I didn't give up on them.

 

[kcdigit]

Works better for me.

 

[slingshot]

If you go out immediately after a downpour, it works AGAINST you. A day after, it works FOR you. In other words, after the ground is soaked and the object has time to correlate with it's surroundings, the signal is more interspersed in the soil. I once ran out after a rain and penny was very iffy on the surface!

 

[Roscue2]

It is unfortunate at times, but wet ground does help the md find the targets. With that said, freezing cold rain does not help the body.