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Friday's hunt--a tale of woe and resolve

Hi, everyone,

Well, we hunted for four hours at the 1895 house, and the coins were few and far between. In fact, I ended up with only one cent, and not an old one, either.

My friend, however, again did better than I did, with a Barber dime and two wheat cents.

We are a bit puzzled as to how there could be a seated dime, a Barber, and a Merc, but no Indian cents, no nickels of any age up to 1980 or so, no quarters at all, no silver Rosies, and so on. The place just isn't giving up the coins like we thought it would The lady who lives there says her family has owned it for a long time and she doesn't think anyone has ever hunted it before (which might be borne up by the seated dime at 4 inches, although the Barber and Merc were both deeper than that.)

Anyway, we may try again soon.

Mike
 
Next time you both go there, ask him to call you over the next time he gets a good reading and before he digs. See how your V3 reads. Do it a few times. If your machine is reading good, then it may just be a case of he just happened to pass his coil over the target and your coil was just off a bit. It does not matter what machine you have, if you are off by a couple of inches and your coil does not pass over the target, you are not going to get a reading. When he found the seated in an area you hunted, it may just have been a case of his coil passed over the target, while yours missed passing over it by a couple of inches or so.
 
OregonMike,

There is some really good information in the above posts, especially about comparing signals with your hunting partner.

For the last 25 years, I have hunted the yards of old homes with a friend. We have our friendly competitions of course, but we have developed a small number of courtesy rules over the years that work very well.

First, we divide the hunting location in half. Whoever gained permission gets pick of the area they want to hunt. Most of the old homes we visit have a yard with a front walkway leading up to the front door. If this is a good dividing point, whoever has pick chooses left or right. Assigning each of us an area helps improve our hunting by allowing each to hunt as fast or slow as we wish without concern of the 'competition moving along quickly getting all the good stuff. By allowing us to focus on what we are doing, we can concentrate on signals and cover the area as thoroughly as possible.

My friend has used a Whites for years and can hunt much faster than I can with my Minelab. But that doesn't really matter since I am not competing with him regarding the size of the area to hunt. I can cover the area from two directions if I wish or three. I am not 'losing' by being slow and methodical.

Next, when each of us is done, we switch sides. This is where the real learning begins. I think back on those iffy signals that I left wondering if he's going to dig one of them up and discover something good and vice versa.

Often while we are hunting, we will call one another over to compare signals on a target and decide what we think it is and how deep, etc. Here we get a chance to fiddle with settings and see if we can optimize our detectors or change the sweep speed or swing direction. This method works quite well in accelerating the learning curve and finding what works and what doesn't and what is the optimal sweep speed for our detectors.

Regardless of the brand or model of detector you use, you need to gain expertise in how it is best used and confidence in its' abilities And then remember that you still won't find it all. Tom Dankowski, associated with the field testing and development of detectors for Fisher Labs believes that we are finding about 10% of the good targets in any given area. (He has some excellent learning information on his website that is under his name. Just google it) The rest are out of the range of our detectors or they are masked and hidden by metallic 'garbage' in the ground. I don't know how accurate that number is, but I find it interesting that I can return year after year to my old detecting haunts and still turn up good targets as the soil conditions changes or I have a detector that separates targets better and so forth.

I've not used a V3 before, but from what I've read, they are a very capable detector. As mentioned above, read and re-read the manual until you understand how each setting affects the detector. compare signals with your hunting buddy. Ask him to call you over whenever he has a target that he thinks is good. Check out the target yourself and see what you think it is. Dig it up. Make some notes. You will be amazed at how fast your confidence will improve.

Good luck.


BTW If you get a chance to go hunting with Monte, take the opportunity. I've had the pleasure on a few occasions. He's a very nice guy, a veteran hunter and there is a lot you can learn from him.


Rich (Utah)
 
n/t
 
Thanks for the great post Rich, you will have to stop in and visit more often.
 
but you will have to get a friend to let you swing your coil over what they think is silver at 5 or 6 inches, the stuff you are not getting.

When you get the chance to do it... take a look and see if the VDI is wrapping around and hitting in the -93 or -95 range. If it is you will be getting red bars that tell you it's there but no audio, it will be as iron. If that is the case adjust the wrap limit and you're in business!

That is something that you might try anyway and see what you get.

J
 
Rich,

Thanks for your thoughtfulness, and for taking the time to write things out so clearly. My friend and I are friends before we are anything else. We're not rivals, nor competitors. In fact, one of the reasons we like to hunt together is that there isn't that sense of having to "beat" the other guy, and when we do find something nice, we both are happy. Even so, my challenge this time around was a sense of injustice. I saw that house the first time several years ago. I often ran over in my mind what it was going to be like to get permission to detect it, and to find something really great. Then, for whatever reason, it went sideways on me, much like thinking about a girl, only to have her like your friend better than you. It's OK, though. I've had to change my thinking a little, and that has been good for me.

You make several good points and again, I appreciate your taking the time to write things out as you did.

Mike
 
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