markinswpa
Well-known member
Well I finally broke down and bought a Manticore. With the sale and an additional discount from Bart made it palatable enough for me. I'm a cheap so & so. Thanks Bart. But as luck would have it extremely dry ground topped off with a frost cap from what little rain we got made it damn near impossible to hunt. We had some good soaking rain and fairer temps so I headed out yesterday for the maiden voyage with the Manticore. I chose a yard I had cherry picked on my last outing. ( a month ago ) The reason I cherry picked it was due to such dry ground I didn't want to tear the guys yard up. Anyway before I tell you about the hunt let me give you my first impressions. Not overwhelmed but far from disappointed. It hit some deep targets with good tone and Id. At sensitivity 23 id was stable and more accurate than the other SMF machines I've used. If there was any Manticore magic going on I musta missed it, due to being new to the machine. Anybody that knows the round Minelab tones knows when you have a good target. I used ATG, 5tone, Rec. 4 Sens. 23. All metal. I'm used to working the tone and then looking at the TDI. I had to force myself to look at the target trace after digging some non-ferrous junk. And target trace does hit deeper than ferrocheck on the Legend. I was picking up small bits of iron and buckshot at 9-10 inches. Overall I would say I did pretty well and looking forward to the next hunt.
So when it comes to Mding this year it has pretty much sucked. Number of hunts, silver, clad, all totals are in the crapper for 24. My first outing was about five hours in a backyard of a house which is very close to where an old hotel stood since the mid 1800s. After digging some junk I started to pay attention to the target trace. The first coin I dug was a clad quarter. a solid 89. On the day I would dig 8 clad quarters, one dime, two nickels and five memorials. Also three wheats that rang in lower and for some reason had a scratchy tone with them. Some really nice high tones produced three swim tags for the local pool and a tag for a pretty well known department store down town. When I got a deep 93-95 I knew I had my first silver with the Manticore. Depth meter said 8 inches so I dug a wide plug and started flipping dirt. Saw a silver rim and said " Oh Yea ". Was tickled when the pinpointer went off again. A 50& 51 GW. Thats the second 2 silver quarter spill I've had this year. Not as old as the first one but no complaints. Another nice quarter signal gave me a collar disc, I think its from an airline, maybe for a stewardess . A nickel signal produced the princess charm looking thing. Kinda spooky I think. Later in the hunt I got a nice tone, a 91, looked at the depth meter it said between 6 & 8. Honestly I didn't look at the trace. I thought for sure this was another silver. After flipping a five inch plug I saw a nickel sized coin, wiped it, saw the big 5 and my first thought was a shield nickel. After another wipe I saw the " Good For " and knew I had a token. The pinpointer kept going off and by the time I was finished I had recovered 7 tokens, all the same. I dug an eighth a little later not far from the spill. It says M Fiedler Jr. A year or so back I dug the same token in the yard next door. I'm going to see if this guy wasn't the owner of the old hotel at one time. The hightone I was chasing turned out to be a clad quarter in the plug so you could say the token spill was a gift of sorts. So not a bad outing, silver, wheats, tokens, tags and clad and the good new is the guy told me to stop back anytime. If you got this far thanks for looking in, Mark
So when it comes to Mding this year it has pretty much sucked. Number of hunts, silver, clad, all totals are in the crapper for 24. My first outing was about five hours in a backyard of a house which is very close to where an old hotel stood since the mid 1800s. After digging some junk I started to pay attention to the target trace. The first coin I dug was a clad quarter. a solid 89. On the day I would dig 8 clad quarters, one dime, two nickels and five memorials. Also three wheats that rang in lower and for some reason had a scratchy tone with them. Some really nice high tones produced three swim tags for the local pool and a tag for a pretty well known department store down town. When I got a deep 93-95 I knew I had my first silver with the Manticore. Depth meter said 8 inches so I dug a wide plug and started flipping dirt. Saw a silver rim and said " Oh Yea ". Was tickled when the pinpointer went off again. A 50& 51 GW. Thats the second 2 silver quarter spill I've had this year. Not as old as the first one but no complaints. Another nice quarter signal gave me a collar disc, I think its from an airline, maybe for a stewardess . A nickel signal produced the princess charm looking thing. Kinda spooky I think. Later in the hunt I got a nice tone, a 91, looked at the depth meter it said between 6 & 8. Honestly I didn't look at the trace. I thought for sure this was another silver. After flipping a five inch plug I saw a nickel sized coin, wiped it, saw the big 5 and my first thought was a shield nickel. After another wipe I saw the " Good For " and knew I had a token. The pinpointer kept going off and by the time I was finished I had recovered 7 tokens, all the same. I dug an eighth a little later not far from the spill. It says M Fiedler Jr. A year or so back I dug the same token in the yard next door. I'm going to see if this guy wasn't the owner of the old hotel at one time. The hightone I was chasing turned out to be a clad quarter in the plug so you could say the token spill was a gift of sorts. So not a bad outing, silver, wheats, tokens, tags and clad and the good new is the guy told me to stop back anytime. If you got this far thanks for looking in, Mark
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Good luck in the New Year. Mark