REVIER
Well-known member
Tom_in_CA said:
Percentages and numbers don't matter to me.
Well actually they do, but not in the way they rule your world.
I dig the more solid, repeatable signals in the foil, nickel and tabs sections and lower zinc looking for gold, once in awhile iron but around here there is too much of that so I don't do a lot of that here and gold that low is pretty rare anyway so I don't car time and energy to do it and if I miss that kind so be it.
Some parks I dig more trash than others because there is just...more trash.
I still avoid digging 80-85% of the trashy jumpy non repeating from two ways signals I come across.
I never fill up my trash bag like I used to and even by not digging the bulk of the signals I come across I still manage to find gold so like I said if I dig if I end up digging 10 pieces of solid trash or 50 or even more before I find gold that was the exact amount I needed to dig at that site on that hunt to find it.
There is no number drawn in the sand that tells me I am digging too much trash or too little to find the better targets and makes hunting trashy sites worth it for me to dig...or not worth it.
Just the fact that I know I am avoiding 80% of what I used to dig and still find more silver, gold and bucket list coins than ever before makes what I do and how I do it and where I hunt all worth it to me.
If you want numbers fine, here are some.
In Kansas last year in January I went to a park and dug very little because the ground was still frozen and digging even an inch deep was hard at the first area I tried to hunt and went to another area where the sun had defrosted the soil down another inch or two which was better.
I had not been out in several weeks so digging anything was the goal even zincolns were a great target for me that day.
I still stayed within my rules, still only dug the solid repeatable signals only and on this hunt only very shallow targets.
Dug some solid trash that day but very little and a few coins then I got a solid tab signal.
Nothing different about it than most other tabs in this park but it was repeating, solid shallow and digable within my rules.
It was no tab, that is unless tabs come in ring shapes, have names etched into them, have a buttery golden look and are marked 916.
Pic one below of the ring and pic two is the trash I dug that day to find it.
This of course was very unusual in the trash to treasure ratio, very low compared to normal but it still happened exactly as I described.
As the weather warmed up over the next 10 days I stayed steady on my course of digging that same 15-20% only of the the trash I came across in two other different parks and still managed to dig up two more gold rings even though over all I dug more trash than on that first hunt...but not a ton more by any means or measure.
Another example is here in my local super trashy highly mineralized park with more tabs, can slaw, iron and other junk than you might believe possible.
In a relatively small grassy area between to frisbee golf tees, an area not used for picnicking now but definitely had been for many decades past because of the huge amount of trash that was still here, I did my thing once again and dug that same low percentage of trash, dug only the solid signals and avoided digging everything else that jumped too much and were not within my rules.
I dug some beaver tail tabs and can slaw here, not a lot but I had to because they were all solid, and avoided most everything else.
I know for sure I passed by probably 30 tab signals in the sta tab range, at least 50 or more in the little higher beaver tail range because there was much more of that at this site and I can't remember how many foil and can slaw signals I got but there were a lot and I left all of them in the ground too.
Then I got another dead on beaver tail signal exactly the same numbers as all those beaver tail tabs I didn't waste my time digging earlier.
Again no difference in sound between this and all the other tabs but this one stayed solid, repeated from two directions and unlike most other targets that I have dug in this rough soil was unusually stable and didn't jump in my numbers at all or if it did it stayed between two numbers...very unusual in this dirt.
Still thought nothing if it, still thought I was digging a tab but it was definitely within my digging rules so it got dug.
Turns out again it wasn't a tab...picture 3 below.
This is typical for me, how I hunt and exactly how I find all my jewelry, all my great coins all the time.
No strip mining, no digging every blasted signal I get, no worrying about what I missed or a care in the world about how trashy a site is or a thought about how that trash to treasure ratio stacks up.
It is what it is and always will be, I might find great things I might find very little but it is all the same to me...I am out there to get exercise and enjoy being out in the fresh air and I hit that goal on every hunt every time and all the rest is just extra.
It just so happens that doing it the way I do it I still seemed to have found much more and greater treasure than probably considered normal and tons of it with machines that can no way be considered top of the line.
Either I am really lucky at this or my techniques and rules I live by in this hobby just really work for me.
Probably a little of both.
There is no exact right way to do this hobby, no perfect sites to hunt and definitely not just one specific way to enjoy yourself while doing it, there are tons if ways and most people will ever think to enjoy it exactly the same way.
You need to hunt the dirt sites you deem worthy and hit the water sites if you want gold and just stay away from all the others.
It is more than apparent to me you just don't have the patience or understanding on how to hunt really trashy sites and still enjoy yourself so just don't...but quit telling other people they shouldn't either because that is your opinion only and not shared by all others and maybe one day you will come to understand this...but I doubt it.
BECAUSE SO TOO is there a "difference" between 100 various types of aluminum, from each other. And each gold ring is "different from each other" (on your DFX screen and sounds).