Critterhunter
New member
Headed off to do a mid day water hunt with a friend who has an Excal. First, the back extension I'm using at 23" long doesn't give me much confidence to go much past my belly button. Too much paying attention that I'm not lifting the coil and dipping the control box too low. I could probably go niple deep but just don't feel comfortable doing that, so until I get a $20 Plano box to throw the control box in quickly for water hunts, I ain't going deeper. I feel no more confident going any deeper than I did with the GT chest mounted high near my upper left chest out of the way, even though on the extension it's at head height. I still will use the extension though when I get that Plano box, just so the Plano isn't trying to float or drag in water, and also so that even at top of the shoulder depth it's still out of the water a bit, giving me extra confidence no leak should matter should one be present in the box.
Anyway, so today I had a decent day. A handful of coins, 1 old looking small woman's silver ring with some kind of black-ish stone on top, 1 gold plated ring with a decent stone on top (boy that one had my heart going until I saw it was plated!), 1 diamond studded junk earring about as big around as a nickel, and 1 woman's watch that obviously wasn't water proof and was a total junker.
Tomorrow I'll try to post some pics of all the bling, although the silver ring is the only real keeper. That gold plated ring, when I saw it in the scoop, had me thinking "this is it!" until I picked it out of the scoop and saw the obvious darker metals where it had been scratched, so for sure it's a plated junker. But as my friends and I always say, a ring is a ring.
I'd say that more than half my signals turned out at this very mineralized beach, that they once again would null one way and only give a real sick or scratchy sound the other, alot like how bobby pins or crown caps can sound. Not all these targets were very deep either. Using the stock 10" Tornado on my water rig, I was only able to run sensitivity at about 3PM or so. I know from experience that the 12x10 will often allow much higher sensitivity than stock on my land hunts, and judging by the video I just posted about how the SEF's appear to handle mineralization better, I'm half tempted to strap the 12x10 onto my water rig for the next hunt, which I'm planning for tomorrow.
I'll post some pics of all the jewelry I found today, junk or not, tomorrow if I can get around to it...
OH, Almost forgot the best part of the story. Later in the day I was taking a break on the beach and digging into my keepers pouch to look at the silver ring again. It wasn't there!
I re-checked and re-checked, and still couldn't find it after dumping out the contents twice. I had already dumped my junk pouch side of the apron twice I think into a garbage can, so I obviously thought I had stuck it in the junk side and threw it into the can. This garbage can not only had a nasty looking diaper in it, but it also had obvious claw punctures into the bag lining it from racoons over night raiding it for food, so I wasn't about to go rummaging through it with my bear hands. I found a stick and started poking through it for many minutes and didn't spay the ring. My Excal friend said just take the bag home and go threw it with rubber gloves on. I told him that ring wasn't that heavy of silver, so he'd be more than welcome to take the bag home and keep the ring himself.
Anyway, my GT was way down the beach standing on my sand scoop for the break, so since his machine was right where we were taking our break, I asked him if he would sweep the sand right were I remembered sitting when I last looked at the silver ring. He swung around in the sand and said he was getting a high tone, and after he kicked the sand around and I felt through it with my fingers, sure enough out pops the ring! I gave him a high-five and said "You're the man", and needless to say I wasn't expecting that ring to pop up. Thought for sure it was at the bottom of that grubby disease infested garbage can, which I was more than willing to let him take the bag home and see if he could find himself that ring.
I'm planning to head back to the same beach tomorrow for another hunt and will let you guys know how I do, and as said I'll try to post some pics tomorrow of my keeper finds, minus the coins.
Just wanted to point out once again that if your land or beach sites are mineralized, don't pass on the nulling one way, sick the other stuff as being just plain junk. Even stuff that sounds shallow can be round targets (such as coins or shot gun shells) that the minerals are really messing with. I can't honestly say the GT has ever given me such trouble on even the worst of my mineralized land sites, but for sure this beach's sand is playing havoc with target quality even at shallow depths. Now, the BBS machines are known to reign supreme at cutting through the worst of minerals on both land and sand, so as bad as the GT is having here, imaging how bad it is for other machines. That tells me that there is much yet to be found at this beach.
Anyway, so today I had a decent day. A handful of coins, 1 old looking small woman's silver ring with some kind of black-ish stone on top, 1 gold plated ring with a decent stone on top (boy that one had my heart going until I saw it was plated!), 1 diamond studded junk earring about as big around as a nickel, and 1 woman's watch that obviously wasn't water proof and was a total junker.
Tomorrow I'll try to post some pics of all the bling, although the silver ring is the only real keeper. That gold plated ring, when I saw it in the scoop, had me thinking "this is it!" until I picked it out of the scoop and saw the obvious darker metals where it had been scratched, so for sure it's a plated junker. But as my friends and I always say, a ring is a ring.
I'd say that more than half my signals turned out at this very mineralized beach, that they once again would null one way and only give a real sick or scratchy sound the other, alot like how bobby pins or crown caps can sound. Not all these targets were very deep either. Using the stock 10" Tornado on my water rig, I was only able to run sensitivity at about 3PM or so. I know from experience that the 12x10 will often allow much higher sensitivity than stock on my land hunts, and judging by the video I just posted about how the SEF's appear to handle mineralization better, I'm half tempted to strap the 12x10 onto my water rig for the next hunt, which I'm planning for tomorrow.
I'll post some pics of all the jewelry I found today, junk or not, tomorrow if I can get around to it...
OH, Almost forgot the best part of the story. Later in the day I was taking a break on the beach and digging into my keepers pouch to look at the silver ring again. It wasn't there!
I re-checked and re-checked, and still couldn't find it after dumping out the contents twice. I had already dumped my junk pouch side of the apron twice I think into a garbage can, so I obviously thought I had stuck it in the junk side and threw it into the can. This garbage can not only had a nasty looking diaper in it, but it also had obvious claw punctures into the bag lining it from racoons over night raiding it for food, so I wasn't about to go rummaging through it with my bear hands. I found a stick and started poking through it for many minutes and didn't spay the ring. My Excal friend said just take the bag home and go threw it with rubber gloves on. I told him that ring wasn't that heavy of silver, so he'd be more than welcome to take the bag home and keep the ring himself.Anyway, my GT was way down the beach standing on my sand scoop for the break, so since his machine was right where we were taking our break, I asked him if he would sweep the sand right were I remembered sitting when I last looked at the silver ring. He swung around in the sand and said he was getting a high tone, and after he kicked the sand around and I felt through it with my fingers, sure enough out pops the ring! I gave him a high-five and said "You're the man", and needless to say I wasn't expecting that ring to pop up. Thought for sure it was at the bottom of that grubby disease infested garbage can, which I was more than willing to let him take the bag home and see if he could find himself that ring.
I'm planning to head back to the same beach tomorrow for another hunt and will let you guys know how I do, and as said I'll try to post some pics tomorrow of my keeper finds, minus the coins.
Just wanted to point out once again that if your land or beach sites are mineralized, don't pass on the nulling one way, sick the other stuff as being just plain junk. Even stuff that sounds shallow can be round targets (such as coins or shot gun shells) that the minerals are really messing with. I can't honestly say the GT has ever given me such trouble on even the worst of my mineralized land sites, but for sure this beach's sand is playing havoc with target quality even at shallow depths. Now, the BBS machines are known to reign supreme at cutting through the worst of minerals on both land and sand, so as bad as the GT is having here, imaging how bad it is for other machines. That tells me that there is much yet to be found at this beach.