BootyHunter
Active member
Ok, so I have been using the Minelab CTX since it came out, and the Etrac before that, I really love the CTX, and what I am about to say is NOT intended to start a detector war. I love metal detecting, I want to find everything hiding in the sites that I detect. So with that goal in mind, and the understanding that not any one metal detector is ALWAYS the best choice for EVERY situation, I picked up the XP Deus at a really great priced used. I had read and seen first hand how well the Deus worked in heavily iron laden sites. I hunt a lot of older house sites, which always come with lots of iron, sometimes it seems there is just a layer of nails, and I always suspected, although the CTX is an awesome machine, that I might be leaving some good finds behind in around and under those heavy iron pockets. Now I have recovered Silver coins with a nail in the hole and actually even touching the coin, the CTX saw the good and the bad and alerted me to both. But I'm talking about numerous iron targets. So today I took both machines to a house built in 1925. I had made one prior visit earlier this week with the CTX and had recovered around 30 coins or so, mostly modern copper Lincolns, clad dimes, nickels and Quarters and a few other things and 1 Wheat cent, a 1927. So today I first went over the yard with the CTX again and again got several more clad coins, 2 wheat cents a '41 and a '42, and a V pin with screw back attachment that may be a Victory Sweetheart pin circa WW2. So I then set the Deus to Deus Fast and rehunted the yard. Now I am really new to the Deus so I expected that to be a limiting factor, but I found some more clad that I had missed, a lot of Zinc cents which were half rotten and the CTX just is not hot (thankfully) on those pesky targets, a few bottle caps which I'm sure experienced users could probably have avoided, but there were no more than 6 or 7 of those, a few old ring style pull tabs and so on. All of the targets were ringing in great in heavy iron, then I got a good coin sound and a mid 80's reading in a constant barrage of iron, I found 2 coins stuck together, they were wheat cents. I rescanned the hole before I filled it in and got a 91, hmm, checked the hole again and found a 1901 Barber Dime! These coins, the stuck together Wheaties, which turned out to be a 1917 and a 1918, and the Barber Dime were completely missed due to heavy Iron masking. They were the 3 oldest coins I got from the yard, and I recovered nearly 100 coins in the 2 visits. So the Deus did exactly what I had hoped it would. Now, I will say this, I know the CTX pretty well, I can tell 90% of the time what I am going to dig before I dig it by the signal tone, target trace and other indications, the Deus, I just dig the good, non-ferrous targets, and I got a lot more half rotten zincs and "trash" targets such as bottle caps and pull tabs, but honestly, I don't mind digging a little more junk to ensure I am not leaving good finds behind. I feel like that yard is pretty well cleaned out, and by the way I hunt with a mostly open screen on the CTX (basically no discrimination) so I hear the iron but the recovery speed just is not fast enough to compensate in heavy iron. Now sure, there are tons of settings on the CTX and if I tried some other things and had a 6" coil on (which I don't own) then maybe I could have found these things I missed, maybe not. But I am impressed with the lighting fast recovery speed and how multiple targets good and bad can be heard with the Deus. I plan to keep it and continue to hunt my sites with both machines, they each have their strengths and weaknesses and compensate each other perfectly. The ring has an odd stamp inside and I think it is gold plated. Thanks for bearing with the long winded post! The first pic is day one CTX only finds, the second pic is today with the CTX then the third pic is todays follow up with the Deus, then some close ups of the more interesting finds. Thanks for looking and HH!
