Finding Gold, more Luck than Skill?

[Critterhunter]

Here's some related threads on gold ring hunting you might find interesting as they relate in various ways to your topic...

Anybody ONLY Ring Hunt On Land?

http://www.findmall.com/read.php?18,1697343,1697343#msg-1697343

Why Did You Dig That Signal That Turned Out To Be A Gold Ring? (Or Some Other Good Find)

http://www.findmall.com/read.php?18,1708213,1708247#msg-1708247

Digging It All. Unmasking Silver Coins Or Finding Gold Rings & Other Good Finds. How Well Has It Worked Out For You?

http://www.findmall.com/read.php?18,1683120,page=1

Land Hunting For Rings- Your Best Spots?

http://www.findmall.com/read.php?18,1677396,1678939#msg-1678939

Horseshoe Pitts

 

[E-TREC-Virginia]

Thanks Critterhunter.

 

[johnmusk]

Luck mostly. I've found most of my rings in front yards, this includes both junk and gold rings. I just air-tested all of my rings, nearly every one of them came in around 12 on ferrous, 25-27 on conductivity. There was one lone thin white gold band that registered 13-02, but for the most part if you're not digging nickles you're walking by most of the rings. I tested them using the standard minelab coin program and it did not miss a single one...except for a crumpled up Chinese ring.

 

[rarysgaard]

I have found 11 gold rings and one platinum with my E-Trac in about 2 years. I recommend you read Andy Sabisch's book on the Etrac & Explorer and look at the good numbers for gold rings. I also highly reccomend that you read Clive Clynick's Site Reading For Gold and Silver. It will change the way you look at your hunting sites. You can't find gold if it's not there. It will help you assess whether a site has what your looking for and also where at the site would give you the highest probability to find gold. There has to be large numbers of people using your site, who is using this site and would they be wearing gold? Finally what activities would they engage in that would cause them to lose the gold? This book has proven to be invaluable to me, I've learned so much. You also have to be willing to have the patience to dig the trash &( pennies as sometimes they read the same as gold) as it will discourage the faint of heart to pursue the easier road. There is still plenty of gold in the parks, you just have to be willing to put in the time and effort, but IMHO it's worth it. Hope this helps.

 

[midlifecrisis]

I believe you have to evaluate all of the variables to get a rough estimate of your odds and go from there. A spot in the park where people just walk or sit seems less likely to me than the softball or soccer fields so that helps shape my approach. Where I am you would easily spend 95% of your time on the low conductors in most parts of public parks and I just don't have that much free time. On occasion I will run across a low conductor signal that I just have to know what it is even though I vowed to not dig any in that area. To date they have all been nothing worthwhile. I am almost afraid of digging a low conductor and finding a gold ring. That would make it very hard to pass up those signals in the future even though the odds are greatly against you.
Just for the sake of experiment a while back I took four gold rings and a variety of pull tabs out back and tested them. Each of the gold rings rang up different and I had two pull tabs that matched two of the gold rings exactly in both numbers.

 

[rarysgaard]

I agree, you do have to dig pull tabs to avoid missing the gold. I dug a nice 10g platinum men's band in the outfield that read 12-15, the same as a pulltab. Every one of the 12-15 signals I have dug with that one exception has been a pulltab. That however is my first and only platinum ring. I also dug a nice 10K pendant that read a 12-1, or 12-2. I know how frustrating and discouraging it is to dig all the junk, but if you look at some of the spectacular jewelry the water hunters find you will also see how much junk they dug to get that. I'll gladly dig junk to find that rare gold.

 

[Critterhunter]

One thing to remember when testing gold rings that have been dug is that they bias the results because people will key in on certain zones, unless they've been digging every signal above iron every time they ring hunt, regardless of it's ID or how it sounds. Naturally if you dig certain zones then the ring pool you've got to test is biased as they will represent those zones of conductivity that were favored. The over 100 rings we used to graph conductivity percentages were all found over 6 or 7 years by an Excal water hunting digging each and every signal above iron, regardless of the quality of the audio.

If you combine the percentage of rings found in both the nickle and tab zones they still aren't as high of a percentage as what was found in the foil range. I bet most people would not have believed that, but the numbers prove otherwise if this is a true representation of a random test pool of rings. In fact, I bet most people would not believe that the numbers show there are more rings from the zinc penny on up range then there are in the nickle zone. Of course this depends on how wide a machine's nickle zone is. I think the major reason why the old rule to find rings was to dig the nickle zone evolved out of older machines that had real poor resolution, and so the nickle ID zone on them was wider, well into the lower foil range as well as into the above tab range. What most people would also probably argue with is the idea that it's a good strategy to avoid the tab zone in a park that has millions of them and you'll still recover the vast amount of gold rings to be found there. It's a good way to lower the trash to treasure ratio in a situation like that where tabs are the most common trash target present.

Now, all this is dependent on whether to trust the numbers we found. The only thing I can say is that I've had at least two other people say they did similar number crunching with unbiased ring pools and found very similar percentages.

 

[texasranger]

I have only found 2 gold rings in my 5 seasons of detecting.... I dug from 12-05 to 12-30,

*********************************************

If you only search along the Fe12 line or there abouts, you may have to wait another 3 years or more....

Try opening down to Fe 20 ......and use two tone Ferrous.....watch depth gauge....8 inches....deeper...??? repeatable audio????

Now go and check that out.....

Con 30 limit???????........and the rest.....Thick gold can have higher Cons than that.......Tex.

 

[Phillip_in_NM]

Very interesting topic. Thanks for starting it.

I've yet to find a gold item with the Etrac, but I'm still hoping. I've been hunting yards almost exclusively since the first of the year, pretty much digging every signal and have found a fair amount of silver, but gold is still eluding me. In terms of park hunting, I select the detector I use based on the age of the park. If old silver is likely, out comes the Etrac to sniff out the deep silver, but if old silver is not likely, I just go with the M6. The M6 has found me 14 pieces of gold (8 rings, 4 pendants, 1 earring and I cuff link) since I started using it five years ago and it probably would have found more for me had I not put it down for so long to commit to learning the Etrac.

It always amazes me just how often the M6 is mentioned when people start discussing finding gold, but as this is the Etrac forum, I will try to stay on topic.

I think a HUGE factor in finding gold is confidence in the machine you are using to find it. Charles Garrett describes this idea in every one of his books and I think he's right on target. When I go out with the M6, I EXPECT to find gold where with the Etrac, I HOPE to find gold. I've air tested all my gold finds on the Etrac and they all ring out loud and clear, but until I find my first gold with it, my confidence is going to be lacking somewhat and it will take a few gold items to build that confidence. I expect to find silver when I go out with the Etrac and I hope I'm just around the corner to finding some gold with it. When that happens, I will take the Etrac out expecting to find both silver and gold. What a great day that will be!!!

Just my $0.02.

 

[Goes4ever]

I have only found 2 gold rings in my 5 seasons of detecting.... I dug from 12-05 to 12-30,

*********************************************

If you only search along the Fe12 line or there abouts, you may have to wait another 3 years or more....

Try opening down to Fe 20 ......and use two tone Ferrous.....watch depth gauge....8 inches....deeper...??? repeatable audio????

Now go and check that out.....

Con 30 limit???????........and the rest.....Thick gold can have higher Cons than that.......Tex.

the reason I said 12-05 to 12-30 was because there are no signals left here ABOVE 30 because I have cleaned this school yard out, been hitting it hard for a couple yrs. Almost impossible to even find a coin there now. That is why I am digging all the low conductors trying to get any gold there.......just not having any luck at all