Hunting mineral rich ground

[mountainplayer]

Hi All,

I've been hunting with an EX2 with the stock coil since April. In "decent" ground, I really feel like I've got a good basic grasp of the machine.

My town is at the foot of Mt Shasta, which is a dormant volcano that last erupted around 200 years ago. I think that the volcanic soil may be at the root of my problem.

Here's my problem: When hunting sites other than areas that have had grass planted for many years (i.e. parks and maintained yards) it is almost NEVER possible for me to maintain a threshold. Even with manual sensitivity set to 10, moving the coil even an inch or two results in a null, and most finds are at depths of 3" or less.

I hunt in Conductive sounds, Max variability, Deep on, iron mask just slightly to the left of center screen. Can't recall the gain.

Does anyone experience similar problems?

Thanks,
MP

 

[Hotcz70]

open her up some. You hunt a lot like I do...so I know you are getting lots of nulls. You will have to open up the iron mask if the nulling is too much.
You might even want to give ferrous/All metal a shot.

I too hunt in conductive sounds with some iron mask...and I don't vary from my comfort zone. There are a lot of people though who hunt wide open in ferrous tones...and they find tons of sweet coins and other goodies.

You should get absolutely no nulling by hunting wide open...only a lot of iron "grunts".

I'm sure some all metal fellers' will enter the post and help you out. This forum has a ton of talented hunters to offer suggestions.

 

[NealNoIN]

n/t

 

[mountainplayer]

Bryce, Neal,

Thanks for the tips. From reading lots of forum posts, I kind of suspected dropping the iron mask might be worth a try.

But with iron mask opened all the way up (clear screen) won't iron give off a high tone?

Bryce...I also tend to stay in my comfort zone. What I've come to love best about this machine is its ability to pick out good coins from amongst the trash. Very few of my good targets have been classic two-way high tones with a cursor buried in the top right of the screen, and I guess I've been afraid that making a change will make me miss out on those little clues that say dig.

MP

 

[Hotcz70]

Hi MP.
If you want to open up the screen....you would most defininitely want to run ferrous tones instead of conductive. If you run conductive....you're right...iron will give you some high pitched hits. In ferrous tones though...all iron hits will be a low sounding grunt. That's what I mean about my comfort zone...I leave iron mask where it is...hunt in conductive tones....and learn to "see" through the nulls.

Neal can really help you out...as he is an all metal expert.

Take care...and feel free to pm anytime.

 

[mountainplayer]

Thanks to Bryce and Neal for their earlier responses. I had a couple of hours on Sunday to get out and try your suggestions.

I turned the Iron Mask off (button on control panel) and switched from Conductive to Ferrous tones. Holy Crap! The sounds!

Actually, what surprised me quite a bit was that while I did hear some iron grunts, I heard an awful lot more high pitched screams. These didn't have the flutey warble of deep coins, more like the sound that deep iron or a brass sprinkler head gives off. I tried this for only an hour or so before my ears got tired and I switched back to my tried and true settings. I've got to confess that I was so overwhelmed by the symphony of sounds that I paid very little attention to the position of the cursor.

The high pitched screams must have been deep iron, because when I went back over the same ground in Conductive tones with Iron Mask on, the high pitched screams were gone and my machine nulled constantly.

I obviously need to spend a lot of time practicing hunting without Iron Mask and in Ferrous, but my first observation is that these settings prevent nulling just as advertised, cause at least some of the iron (probably the deep stuff) to give off a high tone, but that high tone is recognizably different from the high tone given off by a coin. Does this track with anybody else's experience?

Thanks again for the tips.

MP