Full discrimination in a trashy site or just dig the trash? Tough call.

[jb7487]

I'm a complete newbie and I have a cheap detector. So far, I love just getting out there and searching. But today really tried my patience. I started off digging what I thought were "good" signals (partial discrimination). And all I dug was junk. After about two hours and my 20th pop top I had finally had enough. I set my detector to full discrimination and decided that I would only dig strong signals. Basically, if it wasn't a silver or high end clad coin I wasn't going to dig it. I finally found a quarter after another hour of searching.

But after that long I found myself worrying that I was missing way too much stuff. What if that gold ring is right underneath my detector now and I can't hear it because I'm detecting at full discrimination? It got the better of me and I eventually switched back to trying to distinguish good signals. Another 10 pop tops (and bottle caps) later and I was back to full discrimination again.

I went back and forth between hope and disgust (partial discrimiation and full discrimination) for the next two hours. In the end I dug up a few clad coins and a LOT of junk. The site has a lot of potential. It's a park that is next to a fairgrounds. Both have been around since the late 1800's. But it is a REALLY trashy site. I'm determined to go back because I know it has to have some good stuff but I need to figure out a better game plan.

Anyone else do this same thing? How many of you give up and go to full discrimination? How many end up just digging the trash in the hopes that you'll dig up that fantastic find? By the way, I practice in my yard all the time. I'm getting really good at knowing which sound means which item. But there is that small window between gold and pop top that always seems to get me. It's like playing the stock market. You can do it in practice all you want and make a killing. But it is a completely different story when your own money is on the line. The same thing appears to be true of MD'ing. It's like your metal detector makes the sounds you WANT to hear when you are out in the field. Every single pop top sounds like gold because you WANT it to sound like gold.

 

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[Lowbatts]

If you have any indication of depth you might just dig faint, deeper sounding targets. If you don't have a depth indicator on your machine, and the site is very promising, get a high-end machine and see what you're missing.

Sounds like the place has been gone over by those with better equipment or experience because surface or near surface clad alone can tell you how often it's hunted. Your pulltab/poptop to clad ratio should have been higher.

 

[Charlie P. (NY)]

I think you're up against a common problem. When I was learning my Musketeer I dug EVERY signal until I had a pretty good record of guessing what a target was before dug. I still dug some to be sure and anything that seemed questionable. In trashy sites it is the big quandry.

With the F-75 I get the graphic display and that is a huge help. I still search with only iron discriminated out unless it is a picnic area and the headphone noise is too much. But when I went for notching I had that same feeling that I left coins & goodies behind. So, basically, it's a mood or personal issue. Some days I'd rather just dig good items. Other days I dig lots.

Sure, I can go 12 straight coins with no pulltabs of bottlecaps with heavy discrimination . . . but guess which days I usually find the rings and lockets?

 

[Tom_in_CA]

You've gotten good answers so far. I would add that those who say "never discriminate!" (except perhaps iron) CERTAINLY are in a relicky environment where they can do this, not blighted inner-city parks. It just doesn't pay off in some environments. I mean, if you're so concerned about missing a gold ring, you're much better off just to go find a swimming beach, or sandboxes where digging is easy, and hunt there for jewelry. Better than to put up with 100s to 1 odds in a old blighted turfed park where no one's evern cleaned out the surface trash.

So for junky old parks, I will most often just cherry pick and look for the deep silver/copper (pass all surface clad, etc...). Now and then I hunt with someone who *bristles* at the thought of doing that. But by the end of the day, guaranteed, I'll have 10 or more oldies, while they have 1. They have the mentality "I'll just dig it all, therefore I'll get the best of both worlds (deep old silver/copper AND gold). But what ends up happening, is the spend all day chasing that single buffalo nickel, or the occasional gold ring, and end up dis-liking metal detecting in general, or getting kicked out of the park for holes every square foot.

Or put it this way: Yes, you will miss a gold ring by cherry-picking. But ask yourself this: If you're playing black-jack in Las Vegas, and you have 20 in your hand, do you hold, or take another hit? Any dummy would agree that with 20 in your hand, you HOLD, right? But wait, how do you know that the next card the dealer has MIGHT be a one card? Afterall, "you can't be too safe, eh?" Naturally any gambler looks at the odds and says "odds are, it's NOT a one card", right? So it's the same with metal detecting: we play the odds. If someone continues to persist otherwise in junky inner-city blighted parks, turn them loose with a beach pulse, or nugget machine. Afterall, there might be a tinsel fine chain that they would otherwise miss. Or a teensy earing stud, or a good target hiding under nails, etc.... I mean, if you pushed the logic far enough, they should strip-mine every single target out, "lest they miss something good". At some point, whether it's iron, or certain recurring junk items, etc... we all agree that there's a point when it's just not worth "digging all" in some junky environments. This would not apply to the beach, oldtown urban demolition sites, relicky ruins sites (ghost towns, etc..)

 

[joelt]

I plan to sweep an area a few times. It depends on the location, but in general I start low on the discrimination, find out what kinds of items to expect. If you are starting the site with someone else though, you might want to start cherry picking. If its trashy, I tend to bump the discrimination up. If I find there is good stuff, I can decide to go with a smaller coil, or with lower discrimination and go over it another day. You just kind of have to roll with how it goes.

 

[ivan salis]

ok which cheap machine --a bounty hunter? ---if so its time to learn discrimation 101 .

using your knob / disc level -- and a gold item / nickle --and---a pulltab --- lay the items about 3 foot apart on a metal free spot of dirt (check to be sure theres no other metal there.)-- then slowly wave the detector over the pulltab while slowly increasing the disc level until it not longer picks up the pulltab -- now run it over the nickle / gold item to see if they still ring up -- if yes GREAT ---your in the "sweet spot zone" all the gold but much less tabs * ---however if the gold / nickle items does not ring up --very slowly back down on the disc level just until it does ring up --listen very carefully --the tone of the gold / nickle should sound "clear/sharp" --while the pull tab which will now also now ring up as well will sound "broken / differant"--and by using the tonal differace you can tell A from B
now the point is this***** due to the metal conductivity range of gold, f you want to look for gold items * you WILL dig trash lots of if --for every bit of gold you find --- count on it

or you can move "up the scale" and do "cherry picking" by cut out anything below "copper " -- losing items like gold items as well as new zinc cents ,IH cents & iron relic items as well as "most" trash items ------by using a copper level cut off point --you get old wheat cents ,clad dimes , clad quarters and halves -- old silver dimes and quarters and halves and dollars. to set up for "cherry picking get a older copper wheat cent pre (1959 *)--- slowly raise the disc level until it no longer rings up then . very slowly back off a bit until it is back "in" again " --ok your now "ready to rock".

 

[DrGrip]

ok which cheap machine --a bounty hunter? ---if so its time to learn discrimation 101 .

using your knob / disc level -- and a gold item / nickle --and---a pulltab --- lay the items about 3 foot apart on a metal free spot of dirt (check to be sure theres no other metal there.)-- then slowly wave the detector over the pulltab while slowly increasing the disc level until it not longer picks iup the pulltab -- now run it over the nickle / gold item to see if they still ring up -- if yes GREAT your in the "sweet spot zone" all the gold but much less tabs * ---however if the gold / nickle items does not ring up --very slowly back down on the disc level just until it does ring up --listen very carefully --the tone of the gold / nickle should sound "clear/sharp" --while the pull tab which will now also ring uop as well will sound "broken / differant"--and by using the tonal differace you can tell A from B

Ivan, I saw where you posted this once before and it works great on the BH here.

Now, JB, if you plan to hunt this spot a lot, and you don't think others will be, it's not a bad idea to remove a lot of the trash in the area. Now, if it's a public location you may just be helping out the next guy.

I set my discrim like Ivan says and go from there. I still have fun and I assure you, one of these days you'll get a signal and say, "@#$% another *&^% pull tab", right before you see the glint of gold in the bottom of the hole. That event will make up for a lot of pull tabs and other trash.

Keep at it!

Grip

 

[Tom_in_CA]

Ivan, what you're saying assumes several things: It assumes that the location a person is about to hunt at, has primarily uniform type pulltabs. But this is rarely the case. Tabs can be different sizes, bent, beaver tails pulled off, etc... And then don't forget can slaw (where mowers tangled with aluminum cans), and foil wads which can be all over the scale. Sure, you can tune out commonly recurring tabs, but no, that won't result in " "sweet spot zone" all the gold " Gold can read all over the spectrum, from very low foil (small thin ladies solitaires) on up to mid range (men's large college class rings). By passing even commonly recurring tabs, there are gold items that can read and exactly mimic that spot, tone, etc....

About the best a person can do, is various "ring enhancement" programs. That is where persons in the past took all sorts of commonly recurring junk items (round tabs, square tabs, foil wads, etc...) and tested them. Then they tested hundreds of gold rings. Then they ran computer programs to see what TID coordinates would be the best odds to chase, verses which were most likely to be junk. For example, of the hundreds of gold rings tested, perhaps only 5% read exactly where the most common round tab TID is at. So it makes sense to pass that round tab TID, right? And so forth, and so on. But these ring enhancement programs can be a real pain in the b*tt at a park full of can slaw and larger foil wads, which have absolutely no recurring TID. Those items can read ANYWHERE and have NO predictability.

 

[ivan salis]

uh tom please note he said CHEAP DETECTOR * (most likely a bounty hunter type one)-- not a high dollar job --for progammibles of course my advice would be much differant .


so the goal hes after is to dig as few tabs as possible without losing too much gold in the process with his low end BH machine *

so I'm talking low end type BH machines here.** and how to get the most from em -- all you can do is set the disc level to cut way down on the overall amount of tabs you dig -- if you seek gold you will never be able to filter out all the tabs with a low end BH model and find gold --- however you can dig a lot less of tabs on adverage and still find MOST gold items. (thus making your hunts more productive)

 

[Lowbatts]

Most gold items tend toward a lower target range than many of today's tabs, especially the chains and smaller items. I'd love it if tab makers would only use some new material that was biodegradeable.

When I'm gold chasing in the soccer fields or totlots, I cannot eliminate a lot of foil or many pulltabs at all and have a reasonable chance of success. So I limit my gold hunting primarily to those areas. While I dig foil signals in dirt, the foil category on most CZ's, my machine of choice over most years, is also where buffs show up, overwhelmingly. So I only go after the deeper or fainter targets in that category once I've determined it's not a small bit of foil near the surface. The foil category is also where the largest number of gold rings comes up in the CZ series.

Meanwhile chains and bracelets usually do not come up except in round or square pulltab categories. They are also usually faint and bounce between those cats easily if not on or very near the surface. The largest number of pulltabs also shows up in the nickel range on every CZ I've used. If I get nickel signal reading depth at 4", in any park I've worked in this area, it's a beavertail or bent or damaged pulltab overwhelmingly. I'd like to know who thought that one up because it's predictability is well ahead of Nostradamus.

Sorry about being long-winded but yapper is still a trait. As always, I recommend using your machine to it's advantage. Every machine has somewhere that it will do better if used properly than in other places. Add to that what you want to hunt, then use your machine in the areas best known for those targets and you'll do good.

 

[deepskyal]

I hit urban parks sometimes...very, very trashy.

I tend to stay away from the shelters themselves. Maybe I miss a coin or 3, maybe even a gold ring......but I weigh how much foil and tabs is worth my time digging.

I'm a dig it all guy in a lot of places...but not those parks that are inches deep in trash.

You're finding a lot of trash because that's where people congregated to enjoy their sodas and hotdogs, tossing their pulltabs and balling up tiny bits of foil.

Try spiriling out of that area where the trash is less dense, where people were more apt to play in some activity where they would lose a ring or piece of jewelry. Look for areas where you would set up to play vollyball or batmitton...where the activity would cause someone to lose change.

Myself, along with a couple other guys I know, go way out of the perimeter, into the woods surrounding the main areas and are finding some nice old coins.

Back in the day, I could hit a park and it had less that 1/4 of the trash we have now. Digging coins was easy. No doubt...your park probably was hit by oldtimers a long time ago. That doesn't mean they got it all. Some guys work at a frenzied pace and miss all kinds of stuff. And we didn't have high-tech machines then.

I was recently hunting with another fellow and we hit a relatively clean park. Not much trash, no picnic area. But it had a bandstand and train station back in the mid 1800's.
We didnt find anything older than 1965. What did that tell us? Someone else was there quite a few years earlier and got all the old silver...possibly...but that was our conclusion.

Basically, what I'm saying...before you get yourself frustrated...think about where you're hunting and if you want the aggravation.
In trashy parks, I've never found gold and rarely a nickle...I use high disc and cherry pick til I get into the less trashy areas. I have a high tech machine now but trash is trash...it's going to mess with any machine if there is crumbs of foil every few inches.

And if you hear what Lowbatts is saying....soccer fields=less trash=jewelry.

Al

 

[Bigcypresshunter]

Good thread.

 

[jeff of pa]

If it's Super Trashy Yes Full Disc.
At least I Will because of my 15" Coil.

You can always Back down after Thinning things Out.

I Like to dig. I Can do Deep Knee Bends for 4 Hours
as long as I can get down and at least Dig a Can Tab every 2 Minutes.

But get a Backache after 2 Hours if I Am walking
and Hardly digging.

So if there are enough Signals with Full disc,
I Go for it.

 

[MD Dog]

I don't have time right now to read every post,(which I usually do), so I hope I'm not repeating what someone else has said. I'm a really big advocate of dig every signal within reason. When I say within reason I mean if conditions are right. When I was just starting out in MDing a long time ago in a far away land, , I once happend upon what must have been a frat party change fight at a local park. I was frantic with digging every signal and when I was done had close to thirty something dollars. But looking down at the thirty or so square fet I had ben detecting in it looked like I had created a miniture recreation of some long ago battle field, repleat with fox holes trenches armaments tank barriers etc...... :P Not to mention we were in the early stages of a drought as I was going to find out in the following days. I was called about a month later by a man who said he was the park superintendent of that particular park and was informed that through some fairly easy detective work he had surmised that I was to blame for some substantial damage at his park. I admitted that I had been there Metal Detecting but had filled all my holes and couldn't see how I had done any damage. So I said well let me see what the problem is and we set up a meeting to see what they were calling my damage. Sure enough the whole area where I had done my detecting and target retrieval had turned brown dusty and was roped off with new seed and hay placed all over it in an attempt to regrow the sod that I had damaged. I left after making out a check for $300 and told him I'd like to come back and work to fix any future damage that wasn't covered by that check and he agreed, and no police had been called, but certainly could have been.

So Moral to the story is I G N O R A N C E can cause problems with any ideology. I do usually do dig every signal because of an article I had read once about a man who wanted to find out how bad masking was in typical MDing areas. So he went to a baseball field which he himself had passed by many times because it was literally wall to wall litter and he couldn't manage a swing of more than five inches without a signal. But He just knew that if he wouldn't detect it no one else would either, but he was sure that meant it held goodies from days gone by. So he spent almost three monthes hunting this same ball field as soon as the players season was over. What he found was an incredible amount of trash, but just as incredible an amount of treasure. The moral to this story is that there still is a lot of treasure out there even in the well hunted locations. We all have "Ball Fields" of our own that we have been sure they would hold innumerable treasure but when we went to hunt them gave up after an hour of trash in every hole.

This is the thing as I see it. This Sport of metal detecting has evolved since its inception in the 5o's. Gone are the days of going out and finding good targets every five feet at three inches and coming home with thirty dollars in clad mixed with twelve rings and other assorted jewelery. Nowadays you better be up on your research techniques and you also better be fit enough to do 100-300 deep knee bends a day at least. And you better have enough tenacity to stick out the slow times. But if you have these qualities and realize the days of this being an easy hobby vs a competitive sport are gone, then you stand a chance of getting the goods that we all crave.

I'm adding this post to my newbie post at ; don't have time right now to read every post,(which I usually do), so I hope I'm not repeating what someone else has said. I'm a really big advocate of dig every signal within reason. When I say within reason I mean if conditions are right. When I was just starting out in MDing a long time ago in a far away land, , I once happend upon what must have been a frat party change fight at a local park. I was frantic with digging every signal and when I was done had close to thirty something dollars. But looking down at the thirty or so square fet I had ben detecting in it looked like I had created a miniture recreation of some long ago battle field, repleat with fox holes trenches armaments tank barriers etc...... :P Not to mention we were in the early stages of a drought as I was going to find out in the following days. I was called about a month later by a man who said he was the park superintendent of that particular park and was informed that through some fairly easy detective work he had surmised that I was to blame for some substantial damage at his park. I admitted that I had been there Metal Detecting but had filled all my holes and couldn't see how I had done any damage. So I said well let me see what the problem is and we set up a meeting to see what they were calling my damage. Sure enough the whole area where I had done my detecting and target retrieval had turned brown dusty and was roped off with new seed and hay placed all over it in an attempt to regrow the sod that I had damaged. I left after making out a check for $300 and told him I'd like to come back and work to fix any future damage that wasn't covered by that check and he agreed, and no police had been called, but certainly could have been.

So Moral to the story is I G N O R A N C E can cause problems with any ideology. I do usually do dig every signal because of an article I had read once about a man who wanted to find out how bad masking was in typical MDing areas. So he went to a baseball field which he himself had passed by many times because it was literally wall to wall litter and he couldn't manage a swing of more than five inches without a signal. But He just knew that if he wouldn't detect it no one else would either, but he was sure that meant it held goodies from days gone by. So he spent almost three monthes hunting this same ball field as soon as the players season was over. What he found was an incredible amount of trash, but just as incredible an amount of treasure. The moral to this story is that there still is a lot of treasure out there even in the well hunted locations. We all have "Ball Fields" of our own that we have been sure they would hold innumerable treasure but when we went to hunt them gave up after an hour of trash in every hole.

This is the thing as I see it. This Sport of metal detecting has evolved since its inception in the 5o's. Gone are the days of going out and finding good targets every five feet at three inches and coming home with thirty dollars in clad mixed with twelve rings and other assorted jewelery. Nowadays you better be up on your research techniques and you also better be fit enough to do 100-300 deep knee bends a day at least. And you better have enough tenacity to stick out the slow times. But if you have these qualities and realize the days of this being an easy hobby vs a competitive sport are gone, then you stand a chance of getting the goods that we all crave.

I have posted this at my other post for newbies; http://forum.treasurenet.com/index.php/topic,233258.0.html

 

[jb7487]

Thanks all for the feedback. I'm going to hit this site again and try messing with discrimination settings to try and find my sweet spot. I guess I shouldn't worry too much about it and go ahead and change settings as my mood changes. Why not make it as enjoyable as I can? If I get tired of digging trash I can change to full discrimination for a while to improve my mood. Whatever keeps me interested and actively hunting is probably the best bet.

Ivan: Your discrimination techique is exactly what I was doing. I have the BH Tracker IV which I really like so far. But as Tom pointed out, different pull tabs give different results. Modern pull tabs sound like a nickel where older pull tabs and bottlecaps sound like gold to me.

One thing I've been doing which I think I would recommend to anyone new is saving all the stuff that "fooled me". My sample trash collection keeps getting bigger and bigger so I can continue practicing on all kinds of junk. When I first got my MD I grabbed a new pull tab off of a Pepsi can and started practicing in the yard. It wasn't until yesterday that I realized all these different types of pull tabs (and bottle caps) sounded different. That was a major part of my frustration. I was discriminating for a brand new pull tab and was getting fooled by beaver tails and bottle caps (which I had never even considered practicing with). Now I'm going back and practicing in the yard with all of my new trash and trying to find the new "sweet spot" that will result in less trash and more treasure. But I can already tell that there is significant overlap and I'm always going to be digging more trash than I want to if I want to include gold in my search.

MD: I just can't imagine digging everything in such a trashy area. As you pointed out I would have had hundreds of holes in a very small area and would definitely have gotten into some major trouble. If I was out in a farmer's field or around an abandoned house I would certainly dig everything. But in a park as trashy as this it just wouldn't have been reasonable. Still, I subscribe to the notion of digging everything when it makes sense to do so. It just didn't make sense in this case.

deepskyal: I think part of my problem (as you pointed out) was that I was concentrating on the areas around the trees. I figured that's where people would be likely to have a picnic, lay out on the ground, and lose change and jewelry. But that's also where all of the trash is going to be. There is also a story about an old bank robbery in the area where the money (gold and silver) was never found so part of me is hoping to find it burried under some old tree. The odds of finding it are of course worse than winning the lotery. But it's the kind of thing that drives us to do what we do. I'll have to take your advice and check in some of the open areas. Most likely they will have a lot less trash and more coins. As I said, this area was a park next to a fairgrounds so I can picture this whole park being covered with blankets and people playing in the past. The trees would have been the prime locations but certainly others would have been relagated to the open areas as well. As for the location of the hidden loot (if it was indeed ever even hidden instead of just being spent), it occured to me later that the trees I was detecting around would have been very small back when the bank was robbed. More than likely a robber would hide his loot around a very big tree (at the time). That type of tree would probably actually be gone by now.

Thanks to all who have contributed. As always, the answer seems to be: "it depends".

 

[MD Dog]

I have several such locations that I have routinely visited over the years. Slowly cleaning them out of their masking trash and making good progress on a few. A couple have been really paying of really well last time last year, I haven't been there this year but will be soon. You might just want to start such a location list yourself. that way when you feel up to it you can do a couple hours of cleaning and occasionally find the good targets along the way. I do have one place, my oldest, that I think I am well below most of the trash I cleaned out over the past 7 years or so, it is paying out in lots of silver, copper and I'm hoping maybe a gold one day. Probably just wishful thinking on my part since a gold coin still eludes me after all these years. Oh well HH.