Some thoughts on hunting in iron infested, mineralized red clay devil dirt...

[digger27]

I hunted I Kansas/Missouri great soil and learned how to do that pretty well and get phenomenally deep.
In that same great dirt I had lots of experience hunting in a couple of insane iron infested sites and eventually became very successful using some different learned settings and outside the box thinking about target behavior.
I moved back to the southeast and the mineralized red dirt and even black dirt challenging mess and in older parts and parks in the city where we have extreme problems with way more than our share of iron to deal with at most sites.
Again an insane amount for many reasons, I know there is iron everywhere because I have hunted at many sites in 4 different states but what I deal with here at several is just not normal.
I have actually talked to at least two guys in the past that took up this hobby years ago and almost immediately quit because the iron problems were so daunting and never picked up a detector again.
It took re-learning how to hunt all over again with more changes in thinking, settings and ideas about how targets behave in the bad stuff here to even come close to being successful here too but over time and much experimentation I have somewhat succeeded with many bucket list items in my collection now from public sites that have been scoured for 50 years and are now abandoned by most because they are all " hunted out".
They are not but it took some more outside the box thinking to find the severely masked great targets because as I keep saying...things are just weird around here.
I posted some thoughts below on another forum to help a new guy out that is learning the basics of the hobby and trying to get a handle on the F70 at the same time and lives in Chattanooga so he could be dealing with a few issues like mine.
In doing so I made a few movies and it occurred to me that I ID'd a target wrong, missed a couple of good targets at that same site previously a friend who digs most everything found, (something I just refuse to do), and that got me thinking on what else I might have missed along the way...so I changed things up again and it seemed to work and work well.
I am always doing that, experimenting, changing, tweaking...for me that part of the hobby is fun and if you hunt in challenging sites I believe a necessity.
You can't just sit back and enjoy past successes, there is always one more thing to learn, one more type of behavior you might notice that could unlock a small part of the big puzzle because the universe just doesn't make it easy for us at all sometimes.

This was aimed at those using the T2/F70/F75 platform along with the soon to be released F70 clone the Patriot but a comment by another hunter that lives in Arkansas with similar conditions and uses a Deus said he has noticed some strikingly similar behavior and used it to find some good targets he is so some of this might transfer to a few different brands too.
So I will throw this out there, what I originally discovered and a few extra comments after, take from it what you will if you also hunt in conditions like I do.
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I have to deal with some pretty strange dirt here in Birmingham in many areas, I have learned a ton about some weird target behavior that is nothing like what I saw, (and loved!), hunting out west in Kansas and Missouri.
I have found amazing amounts of shocking things because of the outside of the box thinking I have been forced to do regarding settings on my F70 and target behavior...especially on the deeper ones that act so illogical and I don't mean good soil deep but starting at just the 4-5" depth area around here.
Still, for all that I have found and as successful as I have been I don't believe you ever stop learning, experimenting, always trying to get better and gain knowledge.
I wrote this up for Darktower007 who is new at all this and attempting to learn this biz and the F70 all at once and hunts in the SE. like me.
I will repost it here in case anyone uses a Fisher, a T2 or any new owners of the soon to be released Patriot and lives in an area like I do and has to deal with this strange devil dirt we are so blessed with and especially those with crazy amounts of iron like I seem to have here.


Two days ago I changed my thinking a bit and was successful and wrote about what happened below.
Today I tried it again in a lawn I have been hunting for over a year and an pretty sure I got most everything out of there but I still use it as my laboratory and try new things when I think of them.
What happened today is the exact reason why I do this...
http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/today-s-finds/537515-she-tried-hide-but-i-found-her.html




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Since I moved back here to Bama I have been trying any way I can to find the good stuff while still avoid digging most trash and especially the huge amount of iron I have here lots of which seems to want to act like high tone coins sometimes with lots of high numbers and tones.
Luckily most of that iron stuff drops down to iron here and there if not one way from another so I can usually tell.
Of course I can be fooled, it is possible I can get a decent signal on a coin and there could be iron right next to it or in the vicinity so situations like that can mimic iron target behavior...even using smaller sniper coils.
Such is my lot in life hunting here in my mineralized trash and iron filled world so I deal.
Recently I made three vids on a recent hunt to show Darktower what I am up against here.
One shows me going after a supposed screw cap but a zincoln came up instead and there was something deeper under it.




https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=...&v=sejzlCo9rsY




https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=...&v=UuyIs67n32A




https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=...&v=RIvCaOGTgEo


Looking again at that jumpy zincoln I dug even though it didn't really jump all that much I realized that even though I have been finding lots of great things doing it my way using all I have learned since I moved back here to deal with my difficult soil I have been a little too close minded, a bit too confident in the range of VDI's and target behavior I have been sticking too to ID the good targets especially a bit deeper in this devil dirt.
It seems this soil is even weirder than I thought, the range of jumping I have been sticking to, even though it is pretty wide and extremely wide compared to targets in better soil behavior, it is still not enough for this place.
Yesterday I went back to my scoured neighborhood park and on the way home swung over some curb strips in my neighborhood I have been over a bazillion times and tried some new things.
Normal settings, Sense adjusted between 50-70 depending on the chatter...trying to keep it quiet as possible lately, 1 Monotone, Thresh at -1 and disc at 1 using the big DD coil.
What was different is what I was looking for in the signals, how much they jumped and exactly where they jumped to and still listened for good solid tones with sharp ends.
I dug more trash and iron than usual trying this and found that all targets that dipped down to iron repeatedly, or at least repeatedly from at least one direction because in many from a specific direction they didn't at all once in awhile, those were always iron or a couple of pieces of iron so...yay.
On others I noticed the numbers stayed pretty high from 2 ways as usual but sometimes they would drop down lower than my usual range of 6-8 numbers or so I usually stayed in...on a couple of deeper ones at about 5" the section drop was also surprising.
A few were trash, can slaw mostly but there were a couple of good coin targets too.
The pic below is of one such target.
In a curb strip that I have hit so many times but missed this thing on every pass at 5" deep it jumped between the mid 80's to low 90's as usual but I also had several drops way lower into the 40's to 50's...behavior that in the past I usually walked on by.
I see now that was a mistake.
As I said this devil dirt is even stranger than I knew so I have been missing stuff.
No more, if I have to dig a bit more trash to find targets like this so be it...as steve in az once stated "I am out here to dig, not just swing".
The sniper coil might help in this area, maybe more normal behavior that I know with less jumping than using the big DD but I have hunted those curb strips many times using that coil and still missed several coins including that wheat.
It won't be much more trash digging, I can't stand doing that so I avoid all that I can but widening up the range of jumpy VDI numbers I dig won't hurt me all that much, more exercise for me and if it helps me find even more all worth it.
I wish I was still digging in great Kansas dirt...none of this stuff seemed to happen out there no matter how deep targets get but as the saying goes if wishes were horses we would all be riding ponies.
As always I continue to learn, experiment and try to get better at this hobby no matter what obstacles the universe tries to throw in my path.
Such is life living and hunting here in the deep south.

 

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[HighVDI]

Very nice write up! After logging bunches of hours in a short window of time on my F75 I can totally understand the jumpy signal saga!

Your dirt is definitely more unforgiving than mine but I have also dug some good coins on jumpy vdi numbers. The two sharp edge signals I learned to dig up were the nickels that ring in from the low 20's....all the way up to the mid 40's! Then the indians I've been digging can start at 45 and get to low 60's. I'd be willing to bet that I and many others have left many of these in the ground.

That made me surprised you would stick to a vdi discrepancy of 6 before. It seems the silver dimes I've been digging will whisper at me, and ring anywhere from 78-92 usually hitting 88 in between. The barbers are even more soft sounding, but seem a little tighter on vdi.

I love how these machines seem to be very consistent when doing their off the wall signaling. Seems once you learn the quirks, you can get some repeat results. I'm having a blast doing it too. My next line of order is defeating these hot rocks.

 

[digger27]

Very nice write up! After logging bunches of hours in a short window of time on my F75 I can totally understand the jumpy signal saga!

Your dirt is definitely more unforgiving than mine but I have also dug some good coins on jumpy vdi numbers. The two sharp edge signals I learned to dig up were the nickels that ring in from the low 20's....all the way up to the mid 40's! Then the indians I've been digging can start at 45 and get to low 60's. I'd be willing to bet that I and many others have left many of these in the ground.

That made me surprised you would stick to a vdi discrepancy of 6 before. It seems the silver dimes I've been digging will whisper at me, and ring anywhere from 78-92 usually hitting 88 in between. The barbers are even more soft sounding, but seem a little tighter on vdi.

I love how these machines seem to be very consistent when doing their off the wall signaling. Seems once you learn the quirks, you can get some repeat results. I'm having a blast doing it too. My next line of order is defeating these hot rocks.

Thanks!
That VDI spread is more on the order of about 10 numbers here but most times on good targets they stick to about 6-8, but that dime didn't so I will learn...and adapt.
I had much experience hunting in great soil out west, learned a ton hunting in sites in that good soil but with insane amounts of iron and when I moved here I eventually realized I needed to combine all that to hunt in this red clay iron oxide and extra iron infested devil dirt.
It worked and I have done shockingly well but there are still some targets, not a ton but a few, so masked and weird in their behavior that I have been missing them...and I don't like missing good targets if I can help it.
Yesterday I hit a site that was a huge challenge...every hunter in town has been here hitting these huge curb strips in front of a very exclusive enclave which is the site of one of the oldest and most exclusive neighborhoods in this city...goes back to about 1902 when the first really expensive homes were built.
A friend that has lived across the street has seen legions of local hunters hitting these things since the 70's when he moved here.
Tons of trash, lots of iron, cherry picked to heck because there are few good recognizable high tone signals left but there are still low and mid tones and I am hoping some great high ones that are so masked they have been missed for decades.
I tried this all again and again I was successful.
The goal here is to try to tell when I am swinging over the better non ferrous high tones and numbered targets that are so ill behaved and distinguish those from two other specific ones that I want to avoid if I can and I think I made more progress.
Those two targets are the older rusted steel crown caps and iron targets of most sizes...and that iron comes in all over the place here in regards to size, shape and depth.
Using the big DD coil again too, I will try the small sniper eventually and see if that works even better.

Those crown caps appear to have a unique behavior pattern, I will get numbers in a certain range of the 70's to 80's but with drops lower into the 60's and 50's.
Turning to another angle the numbers can actually change a bit on the high end to a lower range.
Doing the wiggle and pull back thing many will drop to iron...but still a few do not especially if flattened.
No matter what I do I can't get the numbers to calm down to a smaller more solid range even on the most shallow ones which is a good thing.
I dug several yesterday and as I suspected they were all those hated caps.

Iron acts a bit differently here no matter what size and I dug more than usual on this hunt just to see what was going on even though I suspected iron every time.
It can mimic deep high conductive coin behavior almost exactly with a number range repeating mostly in the mid 80's to low 90's.
Sometimes if I turn the signal changes completely to low iron numbers and that has always been iron when I dug it in the past and it was the same on this hunt.
Sometimes I would get similar behavior both ways with high numbers but usually, even though they dropped lower like coins might do as I recently found out, the number drop was way low into iron numbers...spotty sometimes but they were usually there.
Also hits with numbers high sweeping the coil in one direction but coming back low iron numbers...still iron every time as it has always been...so far.

Then I got a few signals that acted just like that silver dime.
High range of numbers like iron can give off, numbers dropping to lower areas like nickel and tabs, signals I avoided digging in the past, but on these there were no drops to iron...at all.
These three targets I came across I called coins and I was thrilled that they were every time.
Still learning, situations can change things and using that big coil in crowded sites I can imagine a non ferrous high conductor a few inches away from actual iron that can be hit successively using and maneuvering the big coil and act like iron and fool me but in these three cases this didn't happen despite the iron infestation at this site.
All three dropped but never to iron.
None were really deep either, not one more than 3-4" or so...the really strange behavior around here usually starts at about 5"...but not all the time.
I once dug an Indian that was no more than 2" deep that still soared into the 90's every time from every direction.
That up averaging thing these units do is affected by not only the iron pieces in the dirt here but also just the dirt itself with that red iron oxide...and sometimes with big rusty iron targets underneath deeper because I have seen that happen a few times here also.

Still, the behavior I was looking happened exactly right on these three which were two copper memorial cents at 3" and one other which turned out to be a mower hit old wheat at 4".
Trying to clean that wheat off at the time I thought I saw 19 and then a 4 as the third number...the final one is unrecognizable, so I was happy.
Back home I scrubbed that coin a little more and under magnification I still can't get the last number, the first two are 19 of course but the third number us not a 4 as I thought but a 1.
A 100+ year old masked coin out of this site is a huge victory so I changed from happy to thrilled...and still have hope there might be even more left in this site that exists along with others I need to revisit with this new understanding and slightly better skill set.

Oh yea, those hot rocks...I have them too, coal clinkers mostly I believe and most act like those deep coins but I will work on that in the future too.

 

[HighVDI]

Have to keep us informed with any new findings. I think it's super cool to unearth any coin from a pile of iron.....knowing there was a possibility of it masked in with it.

One thing I noticed about the hot rocks was a faint signal... even more faint and not as crisp as a deeper on the edge of detection coin/button.

I actually had a 40 minute chat on the phone with Tom Dankowski about deep coin signals after digging a few and getting that addiction for what is down there. Kinda getting off topic but that guy is SUPER knowledgeable!

 

[Terry Soloman]

In the 1960s, My Dad used to stop at the Vulcan Statue on our way to our Uncle John's farm, just outside Birmingham. Paradise for a boy 9-10 years old! I really enjoyed your posts, and your writing style. Thanks for sharing your tips and lessons learned!