Sniper coil... Not impressed!

[relic nut]

I use a ATPro and love it. Have had a lot of success and am fairly good at using it. I recently bought a super sniper coil to use at some of my iron infested sites and today I took it to one that is still loaded with targets. I installed the coil, did a factory reset, and ground balanced several times. I concentrated on a 50x30 foot area and took my time. This coil seemed to give the same signal on almost every target. ( high tone with an iron grunt ) Every solid high tone I got turned out to be a square nail. (This thing loves square nails) After 2 hrs I'd had enough and went to the truck and put my 5x8 on and went back to the same spot and imeataly started to find good targets. I didn't tear it up but I did find a nice flat button, couple bullets and a horse bit in the exact same area that I just spent 2 hrs. Maybe it's just me but if you are thinking about one of these, I'd think a little harder. If I'm doing something wrong please let me know. Thanks for listening


HH, Relic Nut

 

Amazon Forum Fav 👍

Agony and Death on a Gold Rush Steamer: The Disastrous Sinking of the Side-Wheeler Yankee Blade - Grab it through Amazon!

[digger27]

I use a ATPro and love it. Have had a lot of success and am fairly good at using it. I recently bought a super sniper coil to use at some of my iron infested sites and today I took it to one that is still loaded with targets. I installed the coil, did a factory reset, and ground balanced several times. I concentrated on a 50x30 foot area and took my time. This coil seemed to give the same signal on almost every target. ( high tone with an iron grunt ) Every solid high tone I got turned out to be a square nail. (This thing loves square nails) After 2 hrs I'd had enough and went to the truck and put my 5x8 on and went back to the same spot and imeataly started to find good targets. I didn't tear it up but I did find a nice flat button, couple bullets and a horse bit in the exact same area that I just spent 2 hrs. Maybe it's just me but if you are thinking about one of these, I'd think a little harder. If I'm doing something wrong please let me know. Thanks for listening


HH, Relic Nut

Don't hunt with a Pro but I have had lots of experience hunting in crazy heavy iron sites, I also have sniper coils for most of my detectors and I am a big believer in these things.
If you said you were taking away all of my coils but one as long as you leave me my sniper I would be happy.

This is my experience in the most difficult iron infested site I have ever hunted and maybe it can give you some insights that can help.

This site was an old farmhouse that was just outside the boundaries of a public park but the park bought the property, knocked down the house and made it part of the park so it was ok to hunt.
It had a ridiculous amount of iron almost every square inch you moved the coil both large and small.
Large farm stuff like wagon parts, house parts, tools...medium sized rusty garbage like bolts, large nails, wire...plus small pieces everywhere you turn like bits of wire and nails upon nails.
It seemed like millions of nails.
It was like they knocked the house down and took all the wood away but somehow managed to leave every piece of metal that was used building the house including every nail that fastened the floors, walls and roof together.
I had been there many times with several detectors and coils and only managed to find a couple of wheaties and that took hours and wasn't easy.
For a few years I know for sure others stopped by with some high end machines and decades of experience but not one of them ever came back because of the sheer difficulty in getting even one good signal and they all ran screaming into the night looking for easier sites.
As far as I know the only thing that came out of this site for all the hunters that came here that was good was one silver dime...and that also took hours to find.
We all suspected there were some other great things here, probably, but figuring out how to unmask and dig them without also digging a truckload of iron was not what most get into this hobby to do.
The work you had to do to maybe...maybe find one good target like a silver dime percentage wise did not make sense if you had any skill at all in doing math.

Then I got a new detector, an F70, and the way I learn new tools is totally anal but works for me...experimentation.
Hours of doing that examining targets every which way from Sunday to look for clues and behavior that can help me make digging decisions without having to dig every blasted piece of metal I come across.
I started in this hobby doing the dig-it-all thing but I no no longer had the time, energy or patience for that anymore so now I look for ways to give me an edge with any detector I am swinging to make higher percentage digging decisions.
I still dig trash but I just want to dig the least possible amount to still have fun and find the good targets that like to hide in trash and iron infested sites.

Eventually in a few months after I had some hours on my new detector I wandered back over to this farm site I came to call the iron mine for one more shot at breaking the code and recognizing the better targets that were so masked that none of us could find them.
It took hours of experimenting with different coils and settings, at first I was digging lots of iron but slowly I hit on a few techniques and settings that seemed to work better and I also started to notice some behavior that repeated when I came across a few targets that weren't iron.
Nothing good was ever deep here, most hovered around the 5-6" Mark so depth wasn't an issue, but nothing was ever a solid signal either and everything was jumpy with iron signals mixed into everything causing masking problems and tons of false high tones as rusted iron tends to do.
There was never a hole I ever opened at this site with just one piece of metal in it even the ones that had a good target.
Just about every good target came out of a hole along with between 2-6 other bits of junk like wire and nails of all sizes from big to tiny.
As I said it took several hunts and hours but over time with practice I got better and better and eventually the great stuff we all suspected were here started to show up.
I dug the bigger iron at first, tools, parts of wagons and farm equipment, then the smaller stuff like buckles and I was fooled by the really small stuff all the time at first but soon enough I started to dig less and less iron and more and more of those great hidden treasures.
By the time it was all over and I moved away to another state I had conquered this site and was able to dig the non ferrous targets at will and rarely dug any iron after that unless I wanted to.
The pic below is a family portrait of most of the better stuff I found...I love them all but that bucket lister walker half was the one I am most thrilled about.
All of these were laying here for years but none of us could find them until I managed to piece together the clues to the puzzle.
I learned to be successful here with several coils but the small sniper found the bulk of them because it just made everything easier and faster in this crazy site.

Also I will show you some of the iron I dug at the beginning, what I don't have picture of is those stupid nails and wire of all kinds I dug at first but there was a ton, believe me.


The lessons I learned here I learned for life and helped me immensely when I moved to other iron infested sites, trash filled sites too, and I now live and hunt in the SE. with mineralized soil infused with unusual high concentrations of iron and those hard learned lessons are serving me better than I would have ever suspected and I am finding great targets in hard hunted areas that are surprising and sometimes jaw dropping.
Learning to hunt in that farm site successfully is probably the single most thing I am most proud of out of everything I have learned to do in this great hobby and I now realize this will have positive repercussions for me as long as I am able to swing a detector.
It took time as I said to learn to do this, for detector types that just want to turn on a detector and go dig the good stuff this is not anything they might have the patience to do but in my mind it is the only way.
Nobody gets good at anything without practice and experience and time spent learning your craft, whatever that may be, is worth its weight in gold...and silver.

I could tell you about the techniques I used at this site but I don't know if they would translate to your brand of detector...but they might.
If you want to read about my time spent here just do a search on my name on this site, REVIER, using the terms iron mine, F70, and blast through method and they should pop up.

http://www.findmall.com/list.php?37

I believe all detectors have a language we learn and then they also have a hidden language about not so obvious behaviors that we can also learn that will work in our most difficult sites like heavy iron, heavy trash, severe mineralization and more.
Not easy to learn this hidden second language but if you do it would be well worth the time spent.

You have a great and able tool in that Pro, you have the most efficient coil to use in that situation too but just don't have the knowledge or experience yet to know it.
Don't know why the bigger coil works for you and the small one doesn't do it better, could be a bad coil but I don't really know.
If it is ok maybe it just works different enough that you need take some time...as long as it takes, to learn the obvious and hidden behaviors with this coil and I think you will be surprised on what you might be capable of achieving.

 

[relic nut]

You are so right! Thanks, I needed that. I guess it's like any tool and just takes time to learn. I will continue to experiment with this coil and see where it leads. Thanks for the realaty check.

HH, Relic Nut

 

[digger27]

My pleasure.

 

[digger27]

Just to mention this once more...
Check your coil and make sure it's ok.
If you can find good targets with the bigger coil it should be even easier with the small one.
Less targets under the coil, great separation, a smaller footprint and a more concentrated scan should sort things out easier than larger coils.

Someone once posted that he doesn't believe in snipers because everything the small coil sees the big one does too so why bother?
I just laughed...sure this is true but he missed the point completely.
It's not just about the signals you get but WHAT KIND of signals of signals you get.
I would rather get info on less targets at the same time than more.

Just yesterday I put my small coil back on my F70 and went hunting in a park area with tons of trash, iron and mineralization looking for really hidden stuff in areas I have scoured before.
Found a few coins and some small bullets.
When I came back home I hit my small front lawn one more time and this is an area I have been over countless of times with different detectors, coils, directions, dry and wet conditions.
When I say over time I have gotten every good signal possible and dug them out of here I mean it.
Mineralization, tons of iron here too...All that is left is pure iron signals...I thought.
I am always learning and this is my own private laboratory so I try everything new here.
I used what I call my blast through iron hunting method where I go into all metal and turn my other settings up to max both thresh and sense.
Can't get any hotter, in heavy iron you would think this is counter productive but I learned it is not.
I seem to get small hints of better targets no matter how much iron is present, any signal that has higher numbers and doesn't stay in iron or drops to iron in a repeatable pattern needs to be investigated.
I can usually tell falsing high tone iron too with certain indicators.
The newest lesson I have learned is to use all I know but now go slow...super slow, painfully slow, slower than I have in the past.
Lately this has been finding me targets in my well hunted difficult sites so for the heck of it I tried it here for a short time.
To my surprise I got one more good signal in my tiny lawn that I had missed every other time in the past
Not worth anything, a totally wrecked Alabama one mil tax token, but it represents something great.
I am still learning, still getting better, still finding little surprises here and there.

For me the learning never ends and as long as I can do things like this it never will.

 

[relic nut]

Thanks digger 27. I think part of my problem is that I am going to fast. Need to shorten my swing and slow down. Learning is half the fun. Not sure when I'll get to try this coil again but I'll let you know how it goes.

HH, Relic Nut

 

[Tedyoh]

I was never overly impressed with mine either, it does have its place, you can get right on the edge of sidewalks and driveways without picking up the re-bar. I think it's a concentric coil as well, DD's separate better due to the narrower detecting beam. I never found the sniper any better than the 5 x 8 regarding separation.

 

[digger27]

Thanks digger 27. I think part of my problem is that I am going to fast. Need to shorten my swing and slow down. Learning is half the fun. Not sure when I'll get to try this coil again but I'll let you know how it goes.

HH, Relic Nut

On my Fisher if I swing fast over rusted iron, not super fast either just regular, these targets usually report as high tone coin type targets...my Tesoros too so probably a normal thing using most detectors.
I learned slowing way down to a crawl will make better non ferrous targets emerge and give me much more accurate info on iron rusty or not.
I am a naturally fast swinger so relearning to go super slow us not easy but since I did I am finding good targets in bad conditions so that helps.
This is the second time I learned this lesson.
For the first 18 months I swung way too fast and finally one day had a life changing "AHA" moment slowed down then I noticed all my sites came alive again and had a shocking amount of targets I missed.
I changed how I hunted forever after this and went on to find more than I ever dreamed possible
Now this even lower gear is new to me but also eye opening in heavily iron infested sites.
Hey, what works...works.


Good luck!