How to detect highly mineralized soil

[Dman]

I have been invited to hunt in Virginia. The soil is red and highly mineralized. I have an Explorer SE. Does anyone have any ideas and settings I can use to hunt this kind of soil. I have never hunted in Virginia.
Dman

 

[NealNoIN]

Depth was very limited due to the minerals. I did better with small coils and going REAL slow and lots of good targets will be just a little better than the ground noise. Less sens. is probably better but with a small coil you don't need to turn it down too far.
In my opinion the Explorer will do as well or better than any other machine in that ground.
Neal

 

[king-ghidorah]

An Infinium would do very well. I seen a vid on here in one of the forums and the guy was hunting in VA and he mentioned the high mineral content of the soil and how it screwed up a lot of conventional MD's. He had an Infinium and he got a US buckle.

 

[dewcon4414]

You can deal with minerals a little better with a pattern search. I found i can up my sensitivity just because it helps eliminate falseing from minerals, soil taps, and EMI. You may loose a little depth in those kind of soils, but sometime having hard red soil doesnt allow the coins to shift as deeply.

 

[Marc in Va]

If you are talking about the DIV hunt in Culpeper which has the worst ground on the planet here is what you need to do. I have used an XS there and have been very successful. My diggin buddy uses an Explorer 2 with these same settings. Your SE is a little different but here are some basic settings. First off you must use the stock coil. Nothing can beat it not even a small coil. You will just loose depth. Take your sensitivity to the point where it starts falsing then bump it down a couple numbers. Make sure you run in manual. Set IM at 14 or 15, Deep on, Fast Off, Gain 10. Also you should run in Smartscreen. Maybe the most important thing I have found is make sure you sweep very slow and keep the coil as close to the ground as possible. Digging in that powered iron dirt is tricky. Many good signals will jump around on the screen. If it even hints at being a good signal then dig it. You can expect about half the depth that you are used to getting. If you know your machine you will do OK. Hope this helps.

Marc

 

[Dman]

If you are talking about the DIV hunt in Culpeper which has the worst ground on the planet here is what you need to do. I have used an XS there and have been very successful. My diggin buddy uses an Explorer 2 with these same settings. Your SE is a little different but here are some basic settings. First off you must use the stock coil. Nothing can beat it not even a small coil. You will just loose depth. Take your sensitivity to the point where it starts falsing then bump it down a couple numbers. Make sure you run in manual. Set IM at 14 or 15, Deep on, Fast Off, Gain 10. Also you should run in Smartscreen. Maybe the most important thing I have found is make sure you sweep very slow and keep the coil as close to the ground as possible. Digging in that powered iron dirt is tricky. Many good signals will jump around on the screen. If it even hints at being a good signal then dig it. You can expect about half the depth that you are used to getting. If you know your machine you will do OK. Hope this helps.

Marc

Thanks for the tip. Yes I am hunting in March on the DIV hunt. I will need all the help I can get.