Is It Possible to Notch Out Pulltabs and Still Find Gold?

[Tom_in_CA]

But if someone's sole focus is finding gold, then yes, as Tom pointed out, you really do have turn your discrimiantion down and dig trash until your arm falls off......

I can think of hunt locations where the trash ratio wouldn't be ".... till your arms fall off". I've seen conditions on storm eroded beaches (where all the light stuff has been taken out-to-sea by mother nature), that we actually find ourselves giggling like little school girls if we get a "pulltab" or "foil" signal. Because we KNOW it CAN'T be a pulltab or foil. Trouble is, those days are few and far between.

I talked to a fellow who hunted sand wrestling pits at a military base. You know, like those pits where they trained guys for hand-to-hand combat. And he found several men's gold rings there, with only a few pulltabs to interupt him. But ... go figure .... the express purpose of that pit is to frolick, grab, pull, toss, etc.... So it was a perfect recipe for loss of jewelry.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

Well, for starters, the term "foil" is very ambiguous. The video is only editing out a certain size foil glob. So ... sure, if someone's definition of "foil" is strictly a certain size wad, then sure, they can notch out *just* that size, and only miss gold rings that also read at that exact TID (which may not be as many).

Try this experiment: Take a sandwhich wrap size piece of foil. Crumple it. Now test it. Then take off 1/4 of it's mass, and try again. Then take off another 1/2, and try again. Keep going till the foil size gets smaller and smaller (down to gum-wrapper size), and you will indeed find that "foil" can cover quite a range! The guy in the video was merely testing a single size of foil wad. So that video was rather deceiving, in that regard.

Same with tabs: Those too can cover quite a TID range, when you factor in the different type (brands of soda), age (round vs square), wholeness (beaver tail solo vs entire tab, or bent up, or broken tabs, etc...). So for someone to make a video and test just a "classic" tab (ring with intact tail) is hardly conclusive. I can think of parks where you'd STILL go bonkers digging junk, and probably have zero chance at gold rings (given the amount of cr*p you'd still have to dig), even with the gimmicky tesoro video notch claims.

Sorry to be a kill-joy.

 

[mudpuppy]

Yes..the eternal mystery and consumption of Gold! I tend to default to thinking hard about locations, even to the point of reading the craigslists lost and found section...just from a little non-scientific noticing, most gold rings posted there are lost in parking lots and bathrooms. Then, I decided to get good and fast at target retrieval to "up" my odds. With a screwdriver, a fellow can quickly stab a tab, ball of foil, penny, scrap of all sorts, nickel and know without digging what it is...when a fellow tries to stab a target that appears to be a tab, pencil end, zipper, nickel, whatnot, and cant seem to hit it easily, that's when my heart starts to race thinking gold ring, or silver ring in the instance of high tones. Rings are hard to stab, not impossible, but harder to hit than some sort of solid. Totlot gold is the easiest to hunt since retrieval is fast and the parking is close, requiring very little physical effort, and totlots are frequented by a large majority of women wearing 2gr bands. In summation, I don't notch, and try to get a lot of targets per outing in typical gold bearing strata. So maybe this will help? hunt the right locations, don't notch, and try to get as many targets as you can in as short a time as possible?
Mud

 

[tabman]

Some of this criticism sounds good to a greenie.

I think most people know that I like to dig all good sounding targets at good locations.

However, there are locations that are good that are LOADED with beaver tail pulls tabs.

I'm not going to spend the entire day digging hundreds of beaver tail pulls tabs when I have a machine that will notch them out. I play the odds.

That's when I pull out the Tesoro Golden

 

[Tom_in_CA]

"The adjustable notch width control on the Golden

 

[CladDog]

CladDog: How do you explan the results that 53 Silver is getting with his Golden uMAX in the videos below. They seem to suggest that you can very easily "notch" out foil and pulltabs and still find gold rings. After watching them I wanted to run right out and buy a Golden uMAX. However, your cautionary response has me reconsidering. Is there a reason I shouldn't base my buying decision solely on the results I see in those videos?

53 Silver is an awesome hunter and I mean no disrespect to him at all. But his videos is showing wht he is finding with his current settings. His videos are not showing what he is leaving behind.

Yes, he is doing well. But there is a dead certainty there are some valuble targets he is missing.

Again, it is a conscious decision about our trash/treasure ratio. In gold hunting, it is critical. I guess it all depends what your tolerance for pain is...

 

[tabman]

"The adjustable notch width control on the Golden

 

[berryman]

So my take away from reading all of your responses is that, given the current state of the art, notching minimizes rather than maximizes the number of good targets one is likely to find. And that, therefore the best course of action is to FOCUS ON THE MOST LIKELY LOCATIONS AND THEN DIG EVERYTHING.

 

[CladDog]

That would be my advice if gold is your goal.

For some, they don't find the reward worth their time and energy and they start using more discrimination and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Also bear in mind that you want to use the right detector. Higher frequency (18 kHz and up) is much preferred.

I have literally seen certain detectors running in "all metal" that could not find a gold chain even if you rubbed it against the coil in an air test.

 

[Larry (IL)]

 

[Tom_in_CA]

Well, I'm not sure what you're asking, but "ring enhancement" programs (aka "notching") isn't necessarily a bad thing. That is YES it can increase your "Las Vegas odds" at rings, if you're in an area with commonly recurring junk items (the classic tabs, etc...). No one's saying it's a bad idea. Because, yes, theoretically, at the end of the day, knowing that a human being "can only dig so many holes in a given # of hours), then yes, you would theoretially have upped your odds at gold rings, by passing "commonly recuring" junk items.

But the much BETTER solution is to simply hunt where the ring ratios are better, to begin with ! (as you say). Like the beach. And then, yes, ditch all notches or disc., and dig all (aside from iron anyhow).

Berryman, from our conversation in PM's, I now see that you are from Orange County. PM me and I'll give you a bead on a good beach zone I found prolific there. I mean, afterall, you are in the land of "Baywatch style beaches" afterall. And with your warm So. CA waters, everybody's in the water without a wet suit (can't do that up where I'm in CA, lest you turn blue d/t the cold!). I was down your way a few months ago, and hit a certain section of Manhattan Beach. I was surprised at how many targets I was getting. In a few hours, I had 80+ coins, a silver trinket, and a few junk jewelry. No gold jewelry that time, but ...... as any beach hunter knows, when you start getting targets counts of 100-ish or more, the odds are, that eventually gold jewelry will turn up. And the coins had evidence of being there awhile (green, brown, etc...), for more than a single season. I was actually quite surprised that the "locals" are more up on keeping the beaches worked out. I guess the really hardcore hunters despise dry sand hunting (they wait for storm erosion). And the only reason I was hunting the dry, is because the wet was lame (sterile/soft) that day, and I had to kill about 5 hrs. waiting for a friend to join up with for a trip to the desert.

The volleyball courts, I could tell, were worked real hard (could scarcely get a signal). But in another zone, as I say, I never lacked for signals to choose from. PM me and I'll turn you on to the GPS. But you'll owe me a 12-pack

 

[jabbo]

All these replies had good solid info from experienced detectorists. Almost 2 years ago I traded my Golden uMax for a Fisher CoinStrike as a backup for my other CoinStrike. My air tests with the CoinStrike shows ladies gold rings (I tested about 9 ladies gold rings) all fall into the meter readout numbers 7 to 12. And my 3 mens gold rings go as high as 17. Pull tabs fall within those same ranges as well. Can slaw can be lower or higher. For me the metered detector tells me more than the Golden because the meter numbers for targets are very accurate. I don't search for gold rings any more so when I see numbers ranging from 7 to 17 I usually don't dig, most likely its another tab or a piece of can slaw. I can notch out tabs and nickles but I'd rather look at the meter numbers and make a decision to dig.

 

[tabman]

Depends................what detector are you using?

You can notch better with some detectors than others. A good example is the White's XLT, DFX or V series where you have 191 notch filters and you can be very precise to notch just one VDI number in the middle of the target to "dirty" up the audio of a particular pull tab. If a common pull-tab ID's as 25-26-27, you can notch out the middle number 26 which will alter the audio response of the tab yet if you go over a gold ring with a VDI of 27, it will still sound normal, if the ring has a VDI of 26, you are just SOL.

Most detectors will block out or notch an entire range of VDI's and those kind of detectors have the greatest risk of not detecting a gold ring when notching but some hunters have a very good ear and can tell by the audio response if they have a good target or trash under the coil but I'm not one of them.

JMHO...... the DFX is one of the best jewelry detectors I have ever used.........

Larry you got me interested in a DFX, so I did some looking around the internet. Can you change the tone on the DFX? If I had to listen to that squawking all day long, I'd shoot myself or the detector to just make it stop.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJbsmqj1Wy0

tabman

 

[REVIER]

Here's part II, to the "yes" post I just posted:

finding gold rings is more a function of WHERE you're hunting. Not how low you can go with your disc, or playing with notches, how much junk you can or have to dig, etc.... Because let's face it fellows: there are some hunt spots that are just not worth it! Picnic table/BBQ pit areas are amongst the worst. Why? Because think of it: people at picnic tables and BBQ pit areas are doing what? EATING AND DRINKING, of course. And that spells tabs off cans, foil off their food wrappers, molten aluminun can blobs from people chucking their cans onto the fires, foil from the cooking, and so forth. So why oh why oh why would someone want to be a "hero" and go try to look for gold rings at a place like that?

Why?
Because some of us don't mind digging trash and as a matter of fact I love to do it and aim for those super trashy sites to do exactly that.
I look at all I the gold I have found doing this in some of the trashiest sites you can imagine this and have absolutely no regrets...never will.
Different people seem to look at this hobby and how you do it in different ways and that is fine.
Whatever floats your boat and makes you happy, and digging gold always makes me ecstatic no matter where I find it or how much work I have to do it..

These gold rings and this 14k white gold bracelet were all found around picnic pavilions and basketball courts...some of the most trashiest sites you can hunt.
If those kind of sites scare others away that is just fine with me.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

Revier, naturally .... "to each his own".

I had the unique opportunity, with a few hunting buddies, to get in on a park tractor scrape in an old part of San Francisco, back in 2006. It was a park that is in a blighted ghetto type neighborhood. Thus the park was extremely junky, and no local hunters therefore had ever give this park much effort (we all gravitate to the cleaner upscale parks in other parts of SF). They sraped up and bladed off the turf in an entire part of this park , to make way for artificial turf soccer field installation. In the few weeks of prepatory work (getting ready for the incoming astroturf), we were in there each night hunting behind where the tractors were blading off, leveling out, etc...

The first few nights, it was pure heaven: They'd taken about 6" off, at first, so EVERY single target was an old target (wheaties, silver, IH's, Vs and buffalos, etc...). All the newer coins had been stripped out with that top 6". HOWEVER, by about day 3, the contractor began to push some of that new dirt back in the low spots, to be his final gradient, leveling, etc.. So when that mixing up of dirt began to happen, we therefore began to get clad, zinc, tabs, etc... again. But NO PROBLEM, as ... since it was all just jumbled up dirt, we could easily, with no worry about holes. So we continued to treat the spot with a "relic mindset" (ie.: dig all except iron).

And during the couple of weeks we worked it, I kept every single target, that I was loading into my apron. I mean, junk and everything. And by the end of the few weeks, I had an entire box of the junk, which I'd nightly been dumping in there. And yes, since we were in "relic mindset" (low disc), I did find a few gold rings, gold nicknacks, etc... I decided to do a study, since I'd saved every single target, and since there was no biases of disc. used, to see what the ratio had been between each gold item, to junk ratio. And I'm telling you revier, it was something on the order of a thousand to 1. Remember, this was a blighted park, FILLED with wino caps, foil, tabs, etc.... Had it not been for the jumbled up demolition work going on, it wasn't an issue to "dig all". But if someone had gone in, while it was still a turfed park, with the intention of doing that "1000 to 1 ratio", I think he'd either get booted from the park for too many holes, or simply go bonkers first.

Thus as I'm saying, in some environments, if gold rings are a persons goals, then he should indeed consider factoring in the location of where he's hunting. But, yes, to each his own.

 

[Larry (IL)]

You are limited on tone choices with the DFX Tab, you either have tone ID On or OFF, that is 191 tones or one. If you want to assign a certian tone for each VDI number, you will have to get the V3i. The tone ID seems noisy at first but after getting use to it, you will know what VDI you have on the display without looking and you can mentally do notching when you are not in the mood to dig low conductors.

BTW, that is a great video to demo why notching can work against you.......

 

[REVIER]

I am not saying everyone needs to do things my way, but not having a whole bunch of beaches to hunt here in Kansas ya gotta find this stuff where you can.
I have posted my ideas of where to hunt to find gold and methods I use to do that and others have done the same and found gold and thanked me up down and sideways but still.. it is not for everybody.

Someone in my MD club used what I posted, went to an old park, dug a ton of targets including trash and actually found 2 gold rings...but he was not thrilled like I would have been.
Not worth the effort as far as he was concerned, and he mostly likes to hunt for old coins, anyway.
Again, a hobby not a job and everyone gets something different out of it and does it different ways so exactly...
To each their own.

 

[Mike Hillis]

I would say the secret to hunting inland gold is to dig the right conductive range targets at the right place. That could involve notching or discriminating pulltabs. That could also involve notching or discriminating foils and nickels Really depends on the site and the gold you are after. The more you focus, the faster you see results.

HH
Mike

 

[Tom_in_CA]

well, you're saying there's not even fresh-water swimming lakes in your area either? (perhaps so). If so, then not all turf is created equal. Sports usage turf, is going to be more condusive to jewelry, than other types of picnicking turf. Or sand volley-ball courts, etc...

Back in about 1980, a buddy of mine had harvested a LOT of silver coins out a certain section of our oldest city park in my town. He was using the original 6000d (which was ground-breaking for that time, for turf hunting). And naturally, he'd cranked the disc, and been going strictly for silver (silver was at all time highs in 1980!). After pulling about 100+ silver coins fron a single area, over the course of about 6 months (and hundreds of wheaties, etc...), he got the following notion: He figured there was, of course, buffalo and V-nickels he was missing. And of course, he wondered if any gold rings were there. So he set about on the following experiment:

He staked out an area, which had been the most productive for his old silver coins, and gridded it off. Over the next several trips, he "made it his mission" to lower the disc. down to even down to allow foil, and was going to dig every signal. Thus he filled his apron full of teeny little foil, tabs, etc.... And sure enough, he got some nickels. Heck, even a few old ones (a few dateless buffalos, some cruddy orange V'nickels that were eaten alive by the minerals, etc...). And he may have even found a gold ring in the mess. But when it was all said-&-done, he made an interesting observation: It simply wasn't worth it. Seeeooo many times, while torturing himself digging all that stuff up (self-conscious feeling in the nice green turf too!), he couldn't escape the feeling that if he just cranked up the disc, he could practically gaurantee himself some silver. But he stuck to his guns, and kept at, totally cleaning a staked out area, till he could hear no more.

In the end, he determined that the nickels were an absolute joke EVEN if they'd been key date (our soil kills nickels). And as far as gold rings go, he reasoned that in 20 to 30 minutes he could simply go to the beach, and have MUCH better odds at gold rings.

It made sense to me, but ..... that's just me.

 

[KinTN]

Tom, thanks for the posts here. The 1000:1 was particularly interesting.

I think that some machines can ID most nickels tho. I can call it 80+% of the time when I think its a nickel, and it may be a nickel about 5% of the time that I call a pulltab and bother to dig it (I usually dig everything when starting a new area til I get a 'feel' for the ground conditions).