On friday, I went up to the State Highway Shed and detected an open grassy area out behind it. I also had permision. The soil is suprisingly black and clay that sticks to everything, is very saturated from all the rain, and has a grass with roots that are numerous and rather fiberous making it difficult to dig. This location has a history of forest fire fighters setting up fire camps on it so all the more reason to detect it.
Visually, I knew for the prarie grass, I was not going to get the coil close enough or within 0-2"'s of the ground and it did not appear to be surface trashed out. I set my Pioneer 505 with the standard coil all the way down to LOW on the DISC/NOTCH knob and SENSITIVITY all the way up to HIGH in the DISC mode. Swinging in this grass, I did get a very few times, some falsing signals but recognized them for what they were and was not distracted or discouraged.
In short time (about an hour), I dug about 5 tent stakes, 5 AA Batteries, 3 bullets, 1 beer can, 1 zipper tab, 2 melted blobs of aluminum, about a foot long piece of old barbed wire, 1 not so common and smaller pull tab, 1 Quarter, 2 Dimes, 2 Nickles, and a number of Pennies (1 Canadian), that amounted to .70 cents. Even as high off the ground as my coil was, it still hit these two nickles under the .5 cent/PT readout.
This field was one of the most enjoyable places to detect that I've had in a long time because I was able to detect it without all the discrimination. I did run the DISC knob at the bottom so not to miss small gold ring or necklace chain items. This field was just grassy prarie before the Shed came in and appears to have sort of speak, remained virgin or was not overwhelmingly trashed out yet. I only know of one other person who has had a detector on it and it was a White's MXT. I suspect in late fall when the grass dies for winter, this would be easier to hunt as long as a guy gets to it before a freeze. The area I serched did not even put a dent in that still left to do.
