Critterhunter
New member
I helped my niece move into a house she rented a couple of years ago. It's an old house easily 100+ years old judging by the outside and also the doors/knobs in the house. I kind of forgot about hunting it until this week, when I had to run over there to drop something off, and thought to myself "You're always drooling to hunt private old house yards and here's one that's been waiting for you!"
So this morning I figured I'd shoot over there for a quick 1 hour hunt just to feel the small front and back yards out, as I'm going water hunting later today and needed to re-charge my lipo before that. So I just came back from the yard hunt. Real quick less than hour hunt just to see what I can expect there.
Well, like to say I popped silver right away but didn't get any yet. But my first three targets did turn out to be wheats. As we all know, where there are wheats there are silver, so I'm expecting some good finds when I go back. I passed up a lot of coin hits looking for the more instant 180 ones, as experience tells me that usually a silver coin will bang 180 more instantly than a wheat or a clad (dime anyway). So I was being real picky, and past up a lot of deeper coins which could have easily been silvers but were sluggish getting to 180 due to depth and also how low I was running sensitivity to ward off the EMI.
By the way, on the Ultimate...This yard is sandwiched on both sides by power lines at the street and backyard, and yet I was happy to see the Ultimate was running smooth between about 3 and 4PM. That speaks well of it's EMI ability for such a large coil, although it's more prone to EMI than the 12x10 is. I found band 1 allowed higher sensitivity than band 2, and that's the only time I'll use band 1- when trying to see if it will allow higher sensitivity settings due to bad EMI.
Oddly, at one badly mineralized beach I found that band 1 caused less nulling when sweeping around than band 2 for the same given sensitivity setting. I suspect in another situation it might be the reverse of that. Must be what channels band 1 is paying attention to that that beach's sand matrix didn't mess with as much. Changing bands doesn't change the output of the frequencies. It changes which frequencies the Sovereign pays attention to by shifting what it watches by I think .5khz or so.
I'm starting to make it my routine now at any site to check band 1 or 2 and to see both- if EMI allows higher sensitivity with 1 or the other, and also if either band for some reason likes the ground matrix better with less nulling. The difference between figuring out EMI or soil matrix sensitivity issues is to hold the coil still. Chatter? Then it's EMI. Then sweep around. Nulling or instability only when the coil is moving? Then it's too high for the minerals. That's how to tell which is which.
When I hit the backyard for a few minutes I noticed a ton of trash signals. I haven't really worked the Ultimate in heavy trash yet, so it became obvious that this coil is far harded to separate surrounding trash from a coin hit than the 12x10. That is to be expected for a 13" wide by 12 & 1/2" long coil, but just the same if you watched my Youtube video you know the Ultimate has outstanding left/right separation at least in some respects, seeming to do just as well as the 10" Tornado or 12x10 in at least those nail masking tests.
Updates on the yard hunt next time I go back. I'm always carrying my pocket camcorder now to due more Youtube stuff, so if I hit on suspected silvers I plan to film the VDI/audio response as well as the dig to show what pops up.
PS- My niece's husband told me he was digging a flow garden and found a gold cross. Man, those newbies have all the luck...
So this morning I figured I'd shoot over there for a quick 1 hour hunt just to feel the small front and back yards out, as I'm going water hunting later today and needed to re-charge my lipo before that. So I just came back from the yard hunt. Real quick less than hour hunt just to see what I can expect there.
Well, like to say I popped silver right away but didn't get any yet. But my first three targets did turn out to be wheats. As we all know, where there are wheats there are silver, so I'm expecting some good finds when I go back. I passed up a lot of coin hits looking for the more instant 180 ones, as experience tells me that usually a silver coin will bang 180 more instantly than a wheat or a clad (dime anyway). So I was being real picky, and past up a lot of deeper coins which could have easily been silvers but were sluggish getting to 180 due to depth and also how low I was running sensitivity to ward off the EMI.
By the way, on the Ultimate...This yard is sandwiched on both sides by power lines at the street and backyard, and yet I was happy to see the Ultimate was running smooth between about 3 and 4PM. That speaks well of it's EMI ability for such a large coil, although it's more prone to EMI than the 12x10 is. I found band 1 allowed higher sensitivity than band 2, and that's the only time I'll use band 1- when trying to see if it will allow higher sensitivity settings due to bad EMI.
Oddly, at one badly mineralized beach I found that band 1 caused less nulling when sweeping around than band 2 for the same given sensitivity setting. I suspect in another situation it might be the reverse of that. Must be what channels band 1 is paying attention to that that beach's sand matrix didn't mess with as much. Changing bands doesn't change the output of the frequencies. It changes which frequencies the Sovereign pays attention to by shifting what it watches by I think .5khz or so.
I'm starting to make it my routine now at any site to check band 1 or 2 and to see both- if EMI allows higher sensitivity with 1 or the other, and also if either band for some reason likes the ground matrix better with less nulling. The difference between figuring out EMI or soil matrix sensitivity issues is to hold the coil still. Chatter? Then it's EMI. Then sweep around. Nulling or instability only when the coil is moving? Then it's too high for the minerals. That's how to tell which is which.
When I hit the backyard for a few minutes I noticed a ton of trash signals. I haven't really worked the Ultimate in heavy trash yet, so it became obvious that this coil is far harded to separate surrounding trash from a coin hit than the 12x10. That is to be expected for a 13" wide by 12 & 1/2" long coil, but just the same if you watched my Youtube video you know the Ultimate has outstanding left/right separation at least in some respects, seeming to do just as well as the 10" Tornado or 12x10 in at least those nail masking tests.
Updates on the yard hunt next time I go back. I'm always carrying my pocket camcorder now to due more Youtube stuff, so if I hit on suspected silvers I plan to film the VDI/audio response as well as the dig to show what pops up.
PS- My niece's husband told me he was digging a flow garden and found a gold cross. Man, those newbies have all the luck...