Culpeper No Friend to the Deus

[vferrari]

Just finshed up another relic hunt near Culpeper VA and did pretty good. My find of the hunt was an 1862 IHP in pretty good shape considering the fertilized farm field I pulled it out of. But save for one or two minie balls and a horseshoe, the Deus spent most of its time strapped to my back as I pretty much swung my Minelab 4800 PI detector for most of the hunt.

I made a quick video below on site to show how significant an impact the mineralization has on the Deus being able to "see" much less ID a minie ball.

[video]https://drive.google.com/file/d/1W9az4xcIlUfOgmPOGooX8Re4P5ketiWZ/view?usp=sharing[/video].


Pics of some of my finds attached too (most, including the IHP, were detected by the Minelab).

 

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[Theppgcowboy]

MD's are like golf clubs, it all depends on the yard-age.

 

[Tedyoh]

Nice finds.....funny how you feel the IHP was your find of the day where id give up 5 Indians to dig war time Minnie Ball...

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[usmcscorpio]

Nice finds for sure! Great job on the video too!
Wondering...I've gathered from others that have posted comments on the new HF Coils...DEPTH seems to be seriously affected when using the new HF Coil.
Slap on the STOCK 9" or 11" Coil, and you'd be hammering that Civil War Bullet down to at least 6" to 9" inches...bad soil and all.
Thanks for sharing!

 

[smokeythecat]

It's not the Deus. There is NO VLF MACHINE that will go deep in the true Culpeper red dirt. I have used four brands there myself, depth is minimal. You CAN get relics out of Culpeper, but you've got to be smart about it. My Deus HAS recovered nice stuff from there. A lot of the places were set in winter huts, and if you find chirppy nails, thing to do was was simply take a big shovel (now this is woods, not lawns or fields) and start digging about 6" deep and a 3' circle. Any decent vlf machine will pull out the items at that point. Now if you go with a PI machine, sure they will go significantly deeper, HOWEVER, you will find hundreds of nails and waste most of your day. It's the dirt's fault. Less digging and better items, or better items and enough nails to build a house. That seems to be the choice. Have pulled 300 bullets out of Culpeper and my share of plates and other things with the Deus and my Tesoro. It takes work. USMCSCORPIO, I have the stock 9" coil, it goes about as deep as the Tesoro does. Since all these sites have been pounded in the past, you have to dig pits, wade through swamps, go IN the briars, right up to roadsides and driveways, and go very, very slow. But the vlf machines will still work. I had two PI machines, and due to the weight and their nail eating ability sold both of them. I have too many sites which are NOT Culpeper red dirt to justify getting another PI nail eater.

 

[sprailroad]

Good video, and good lesson or bit of information as well. It just confirms what I've read over time on T-Net, in that much depends on where you live or detect. The SOIL. Fella's who live in Georgia or in this case Virginia who might relic hunt, are the ones who can recommend just what make and model of detector works best in their dirt. Some detectors can handle bad soil better than others, and I mean detectors of good and equal quality. Why?, I don't know. It's just the nature of the beast I'd guess. Even within your own state your own detector of choice seems to operate better and deeper in some places as opposed to others. Oh well, no matter where you live or what you hunt with, enjoy.

 

[Cletus]

great finds buddy. Congrats !!!

 

[Calabash Digger]

congrats on the hunt and finds! Wow that dirt is awful....

 

[vferrari]

Nice finds for sure! Great job on the video too!
Wondering...I've gathered from others that have posted comments on the new HF Coils...DEPTH seems to be seriously affected when using the new HF Coil.
Slap on the STOCK 9" or 11" Coil, and you'd be hammering that Civil War Bullet down to at least 6" to 9" inches...bad soil and all.
Thanks for sharing!

First of all thanks for viewing and commenting on the video, my first attempt at a metal detecting informational video. I'm no Calabash Digger from a personality and production values perspective, but I am just glad I did not come off as a blubbering idiot, either.

Sir, I understand based on theory where you are coming from, but I have to respectfully disagree on a couple of points. First of all, mineralized dirt aside, my experience (and I know Calabash Digger's experience) is that the HF coil is plenty deep on high conductors (e.g., clad and silver) at its lower frequency of 13 to 14 khz. Perhaps, not as ultimately deep as the LF coils at 4 khz, but I never use that frequency for various reasons (especially in hot dirt as explained below). The HF coils actually hit mid-conductors (gold, brass, small lead, aluminum) deeper than the LF coils at the higher operating frequencies. The HF 9" round coil is my general purpose coil now based on extensive runs at the beach, parks, and now hot dirt relic hunting. I have rarely gone back to the LF coils and am considering selling the 9" LF (and keeping the 11" LF for coverage).

Regarding the red mineralized dirt: Based on my experience of over 8 different multi-day CW relic hunts in the Culpeper region over the past two+ years using the Deus (including 4 different coils: 9/11" LF Round/Elliptical HF and 6 of those hunts were conducted without the HF coil in existance) and other detectors (such as the Whites MXT/MX Sport, Teknetics T2, Fisher F75, and AT Pro), LF coils will hold there own but will not noticeably out-perform the HF coil on depth there. The HF 9" round coil is your best bet for all around performance there (and, yes, that is not saying much). This is due to the following: At 13 to 14 kHz (for the HF) there is practically no depth performance difference than the LF coil at 8 or 12 khz. The HF coil is more stable in the mineralized dirt and emi (the literally hundreds of GPX/ATX PI detectors that are in the hands of 95% of the other folks hunting and overhead, poorly shielded power lines). 4 khz LF is unusable in Culpeper, period, because TX power is locked at 3. The HF coil affords the option to significantly up frequency to 28 khz which hits harder on small brass and lead, especially when you are scanning over dirt tailings removed from a deep trash pit or hut. If you really wanted to seriously hunt these fields with the LF, the 11" would be your best bet from a swing coverage standpoint, but will not outperform the HF on depth, believe me, even tweaking tx power down to 1 didn't make much of difference for me. I like to hunt with my GPX detector and strap the Deus on to my daypack or web gear suspension harness and carry it along with me. Sometimes, I just take the elliptical and rod and just tuck it into my belt. I actually preferred using the XP MI6 pinpointer in the field even if I was not using the coil. I just had the backphones slung around my neck and when I needed to pinpoint, put the GPX and GPX headphones down and donned the XP headphones and pinpointed, worked great.

BTW, I did not show it in the video, but full tones is also basically unusable in that soil, just constantly chattery even worse than my GF example.

BTW - as Smokey says, all VLFs suffer there, but if I was forced to detect there with a VLF detector, it would be the Deus. Primarily because of the flexibility of going into those various program modes I demonstrated. The only reason I highlighted the Deus in the title is because this is the Deus forum, not a knock against the Deus.

 

[vferrari]

Nice finds.....funny how you feel the IHP was your find of the day where id give up 5 Indians to dig war time Minnie Ball...

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Lol, I know where you are coming from. It is funny. We know where the firing ranges are (including knowing where to find the drops as well as the fired minie balls) so if my digging buddies and I are coming up short on brass finds, we mosey on over to the bullet fields to get our mojo going. We call them the pity fields or fields of shame because you have to lower your self respect to go over there just to dig bullets all day, which is fine, but we are looking for buttons, brass, and glass, primarily, though we love finding more rare bullet types like enfields, shalers, ring-tail sharps, and carved bullets. The Indian Head penny is valued by me because it is a war date "Fatty" in great condition which means it was likely dropped by a camp occupant sometime during the war. Believe me, I would not be as excited about it if it was 1877, even if that is a key date.

A friend of mine from Alaska who was attending an archeological metal detecting course with me in Orange, Virginia at Montpelier (President Madison's estate) was really interested in my dug minie balls. Which is ironic considering that he could regularly venture into Alaskan streams and creeks and pull thousands of dollars of gold out in a day's worth of hunting. To him, the lead was more exciting than gold. I would gladly give up some minie balls to be able to go regularly find gold water hunting. It's all a matter of degree, perspective, and access.

 

[Tedyoh]

Field of Shame.....that's great... that's where my sorry ass belongs! Thanks for the video as well....a friend of mine was asking my opinion on buying a HF coil for a DIV hunt or buying a used Minelab PI....i thought, in theory, the HF would do better....obviously not....ill pass along the video...

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[vferrari]

Field of Shame.....that's great... that's where my sorry ass belongs! Thanks for the video as well....a friend of mine was asking my opinion on buying a HF coil for a DIV hunt or buying a used Minelab PI....i thought, in theory, the HF would do better....obviously not....ill pass along the video...

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Oh, yeah. You SHOULD come too, I guarantee if you want bullets, you can find some. There is a reason why people come all the way from Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, Texas, Michigan, Ohio, New York, and California to attend - they want to be able to find relics, and despite the brutal soil conditions, these sites deliver. I've seen folks carry out Gallon size freezer bags full of bullets from just one afternoon's digging. A couple of local Culpeper hunters I met at DIV primarily used VLF machines (CTX and a Whites MXT) to hunt and the kid using the MXT found nearly 100 bullets and a few buttons in one afternoon with VLF - so it's most important to know your machine. They have both switched over to PI's and are terrorizing their permissions with that technology now. Make sure your friend gets some swing time on that PI machine before he shows up. If he has not had much time on it, then he will be spending the first couple of days just learning what its telling him.

One of our hunting partners had come up from Florida for his first DIV. He is primarily a water hunter and had the CTX. Found a LOT of iron and perhaps a couple of bullets (after we took him to the firing range), but he had a great find despite the frustration with the Culpeper soil when he came up with a rifle trigger guard - he went back into the woods to try to find the rest of the weapon, lol.

 

[Bharpring]

In your test video, was the freq 2, silencer -1 or something else?

 

[Bharpring]

Sorry meant reactivity 2, silencer -1

 

[Bharpring]

And then did the signal get any better (after you buried the bullet) if you increased frequency to 28 or 54?

 

[Toothpick]

Lol, I know where you are coming from. It is funny. We know where the firing ranges are (including knowing where to find the drops as well as the fired minie balls) so if my digging buddies and I are coming up short on brass finds, we mosey on over to the bullet fields to get our mojo going. We call them the pity fields or fields of shame because you have to lower your self respect to go over there just to dig bullets all day, which is fine, but we are looking for buttons, brass, and glass, primarily, though we love finding more rare bullet types like enfields, shalers, ring-tail sharps, and carved bullets............

I am not a CW relic hunter (only because of my location), but I often wondered why some youtube stars almost wet their pants when they find a minie ball. I would think that there has to be 100's of thousands bullets in the ground in many areas. Kind of like finding a wheatie coin hunting. Cool beans when it's your first one, but I would think that the novelty wears off after you dig a few hundred.

 

[vferrari]

In your test video, was the freq 2, silencer -1 or something else?

Sorry meant reactivity 2, silencer -1

Good questions, I should have stated those parameters - BTW the whole video was a spur of the moment thing so I was not rehearsed at all, nor was it meant to be definitive A to B comparison on modes or to identify optimal settings. That being said, here are the settings that were used:

Unmasker:
Disc = 6 (anywhere from 6 to 10 are good settings depending on local conditions, I would actually lean towards 10)
Tone= Pitch (Pitch frequency is user's choice - pick something that stands out from Iron volume)
Sense = 90 (I might have been able to push sensitivity a little more, but it would not have made much difference on depth because the performance curve starts to flatten out after 93)
TX Power = fixed on the HF coils at 2
Frequency = 14.4 khz
Iron Volume = 3
Reactivity = 2.5 (I could have tried a lower Rx, but really at that depth should not have made a difference, you could see the signal strength just fell off a cliff).
Silencer = 0 (since this is meant to be an iron unmasking program, applying a little silencer is probably called for but I have yet to do exhaustive testing on how silencer affects the unmasking affect)
Audio Response = 4
GB = Fixed (if unmasking), Tracking (if searching using the unmasking program)
No Notch

Gold Field
Sense = 95
Frequency = 14.4 (if you are focused on mid-conductors, then 28.8 khz might give you a slight advantage, but you will loose signal strength on deeper high conductors like minie balls).
Reactivity = 2.5 (this is really important, in this case, higher reactivities actually provide better "resolution" of the target, I would go no lower than 2 and would favor 2.5 to 3 so you are not getting a long pitch buzz as you pass the coil over the target, with the other noise, including threshold, adjacent targets or targets altogether may be indistinguishable from each other or from the ground noise)
DISC IAR (Iron Audio Reject): 0 when searching, 5 when trying to determine ferrous/non-ferrous though I found that in the Culpeper soil, the IAR would break up even a non-ferrous signal such as a minie ball - not as noticeable in the video but it WAS there).
Threshold = 5 (I like it crackly because having the threshold disappear to silence may even be telling you something).
Audio Response= 4

Hope this helps.

 

[vferrari]

And then did the signal get any better (after you buried the bullet) if you increased frequency to 28 or 54?

I did not increase the frequency there because the bullet was a high conductor, but if the target was a mid-conductor (brass, small lead), the signal would likely get a little stronger. I found by trial and error, the best "search frequency" for most relics was 14.4, if you wanted to tune into mid-conductors specifically, then 28.8 could help but then you would definitely be sacrificing high conductive targets. I would never go to 54 khz for relic hunting, you would be trying to pinpoint BB's, nail heads, ration can pieces until you became insane.

 

[vferrari]

I am not a CW relic hunter (only because of my location), but I often wondered why some youtube stars almost wet their pants when they find a minie ball. I would think that there has to be 100's of thousands bullets in the ground in many areas. Kind of like finding a wheatie coin hunting. Cool beans when it's your first one, but I would think that the novelty wears off after you dig a few hundred.

You are so right. I still enjoy just digging bullets, though, all joking about fields of shame aside. It is relaxing for me. When I made that video, I had intentionally gone to that field knowing it was a high density bullet firing range (but also a lot of iron junk too) to finish up the hunt with some bullet finds. It's a common saying out there, when the sun is going down on the day's hunt, "One last bullet". here are some pics of those last few fired bullets as I found them.



And "One Last Bullet" Sunset



Almost no place I'd rather be.

 

[Bharpring]

You know, it’s funny because in the xp tutorial videos Gary does some tests on the hf round coil. One of the tests is a nail test where he puts a non ferrous next to a nail and sweeps right over it showing how the hf coil separates. He then keeps adding nails right next to the non ferrous target and keeps getting a good signal. However, he never says what frequency he is using? Only that he is using Deus Fast.

Your video is great. Good job. Just wanted to see if you could get more depth in mineralized soil using the higher frequencies and higher reactivities. Would have made the video ten time longer.

I never use silencer higher than -1 and I like the 2.5 reactivity for general hunting. I feel that I am able to hit every good target with that reactivity at decent depth. Just need to adjust swing speed according to iron infestation (or aluminum).