Hello Monte and any other Tiger Shark users

[Rick (SJCA)]

Hello Monte and the rest of the Gang.

I'm considering on purchasing a Tiger shark and needed your option. I was initially thinking about getting a Whites Beach Hunting ID, but was told that it can't handle the mineralized ground here in California. What do you feel about the tiger shark? Is it able to handle mineralized ground better? I will be using it mostly for fresh water hunting, so salt isn't the issue, just the mineralized ground. I have a Surf PI that I have been using and it works great, but just digging up tons of iron object to get what little good stuff I get. If the tiger shark won't fit the bill, do you have any other recommendations of another machine?

Thanks for your input Monte and the rest of the Gang.

Sincerely,
Rick

 

[Monte]

with it comes some challenges that you don't always have with salt water.

Hunting a salt water site means you have to deal with the negative iron mineralization that might be present, as well as the low-conductive wetted salts. The first challenge is properly setting the GB to handle the iron mineralization, and the second is usually using just enough low-end discrimination adjustment to reject the low-conductive wet salts.

Once a good beach/water unit is set up, and due to somewhat easier recovery efforts at the beach, the hunter will get hits on all sorts of metal targets and simply recover them all.

Remember, the 100% accurate form of discrimination/Target ID is your eyes!"

Recover a target and look to see if it is something you want to keep or not.

Fresh water beach hunting can be rather pleasurable, at times, by comparison. It all depends upon the environment you're hunting in. I live in NW Oregon and our coastal beaches are very mineralized. I have hunted saltwater beaches in two eastern states, two western states, and the highly salt-concentrated inner state of Utah. The toughest was Utah, and Oregon beaches were next most challenging. Utah's biggest challenge was the very high salt level, mixed with some iron mineralization, and Oregon beaches I hunt have salt water, but some nasty mineralization. Florida, on the other hand, was sheer pleasure to search!

Okay, back to where I was headed, and that was to the freshwater challenges. When hunting freshwater beaches you're not having to deal with any conductive salts, so that issue of having to use some discrimination to reject conductive properties isn't there. However, and this is what many hobbyists just do not understand, often times a freshwater beach happens to also be a site where the ground mineral is high reading. It is not only a high-reading ground mineral but it is a very dense, challenging medium to hunt thru.

Those who attempt to hunt such a site with a detector that relies on a fixed Ground Balance in the Discriminate mode, such as with a Tesoro DeLe

 

[Rick (SJCA)]

Hello Monte,

Thanks, once again, for your valuable input. After reading your reply, I realized many things.

For starters, when I was very young and got started in this hobby, I only had a detector that went off on all metal; no discrimination what so ever. Sure I dug up a lot of junk, but I have found many cool things with that detector also (even several gold rings).

But once I got a TID machine (XLT), 30+ years later after getting back into the hobby, I thought I was going to bring in the real 'Goods'. But I noticed that the goods weren't turning up as I thought. Sure I found clad coins, silver coins and silver rings, but no gold. Going from the XLT to the MXT (the gold machine), I thought things were going to change in the gold content, but still no gold. And I knew it was hotter on gold by the numerous air test and garden test I have done.

Then I bought a MineLab Sovereign GT, not for the gold but for silver coins,as I have done test with friends who have Minelab and have compared signals numerous times on targets they have found and I couldn't hear them with the MXT. I stood by, excited and then disappointed (not disappointed for them, but in my machine), watching them dig up another silver coin at Golden Gate Park.

So the first time out with the GT, I was going crazy, as I didn't know what it was telling me. I felt I have made the biggest mistake on buying it. But I wasn't going to give up so easily and kept using it. So I just kept digging and digging up targets. I noticed by doing this, cool things started coming out of the ground again, even a gold ring. That when I realized something. This GT was like my old machine when I was a kid but more powerful(deeper targets) and could discriminate the iron. I was now digging up everything except iron.

So I decided when I use the MXT that I will treat it like my GT with no meter. I will not look at the meter and dig only on good sounding targets. Guess what! Cool things are coming out of the ground again. I have found 4 gold rings within a month. I now realize that I'm not too crazy about detector with meters anymore, at least I won't be buying one specifically for that feature. I used to think Tesoro was a dumb company for not making more units with TID, but now I think otherwise.

So from what I have read from your post, I realized my Surf PI is doing what I already have been doing in the dirt these past few month, and that is to dig it up and then see what it is. Sure it may take extra time, but it does pay off eventually.

Thanks again Monte for your time and knowledge. I'm looking at my Surf PI with a different attitude; realizing that she is a keeper. She certainly can handle the mineralized ground here in California.

Take care and God Bless.
Sincerely,
Rick