No more tabs? Tesoro Tejon Black

[JoeDirty]

Hello, just wanted to run this by you guys. I took some advice from Mastering the Tesoro. I dug a beaver tail tab, then set my alt. disc where it just gets a little scratchy. I minimized by tab digging down to almost nothing. Every so often digging while guessing it to be a tab and that being the case. The beaver tails come in later than the modern tabs. The beavers are smoother but seem to fall off and not be smooth while the modern tabs seem to blare. Any thoughts from the pros to this green guy? I don't want to waste time digging millions of tabs but hate to miss some rings and such. I did find a nice 925 ring! My first real ring to find. Thanks.
P.S. I was using the 5.75 concentric coil. It is awesome!

 

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[digger27]

Gold can come in anywhere, small pieces and thin chains down in iron, all along the range of foil, nickels, tabs and into zinc....all of it
You don't want to miss tab area rings but in my experience with your disc at this level you are cutting out way more gold than you might want to.
Many rings can come in at tabs for sure but these are going to be pretty large at 10k comparatively, or smaller but higher karat types at 14k and up and so far I have dug way more in foil and nickel by far than I ever have in tabs...more than 3 times as many.
I have found them in all these ranges up to low zinc so far which is decent sized can slaw range but also large gold class ring range, and gold can come in even higher than that up to the silver coin areas in the case of very high karat gold or large gold coins.

We don't want to dig trash, nobody does, but in the gold game that is just part of the deal because gold is the ninja of all metals, a master of disguise and likes to hide in very trashy areas more often then not.

What to do?

I can't do it the way many do using a Tesoro, set the disc and dig everything that beeps above it because this would drive me crazy knowing what I know about how many great targets can come in low especially gold.
I did this set the disc and dig thing early on but soon changed as I started to realize what I could be missing.
It is perfectly fine for those that want to hunt that way but for me not so much...however I also no longer have the patience, time or energy to dig trash the way I used to but add to all that I still hate to miss great things or worse let the what if's bother and frustrate me to no end.
What I do, the way I figured out the best way for me to hunt and keep my sanity is a different way that I will put down here as a another option you might want to try.
Just a suggestion but it works for me, I do avoid tons of trash this way and still find gold not only in tabs but in nickel and foil too...another option for you as your skill set grows.
I use the thumbing method because so far using my Tesoros every piece of gold I have found so far has come in solid and clear even in extreme heavy trash filled sites but that is my experience and is not in stone by any means.
This is not a perfect method, all my gold has been fairly shallow at 5"or less and deeper targets can act differently, and I sure could have missed some along the way doing it like this too but I have found more than my share of gold in my time, avoided tons of trash doing it and the what if's never bother me.
This is a hobby that is supposed to be fun and digging huge amounts of trash is not fun for me anymore but digging up great treasure still is.

My line in the sand has become thumbing the disc knob past the fade out point then back down and learning how all of my gold, (again...so far), has come in.
Here is that method copied from another post here on this forum...


"I always try to get signals in low disc for the deepest and most solid and clearest signals then I thumb that knob up to the fade out point and then past it, then I'd slowly turn it down as I am swinging over the target and listen.
Targets that just come in and don't chatter, sound fuzzy, or make many if any clicks I have usually found to be good ones.
Most bad targets will be noisy when you do it this way.
Not all... some good targets could come up but bit noisy, some bad targets could be solid like many folded over beaver tail tabs that are shallow or laying in the ground flat in relation to my coil but this is the way I have been doing it for a while and for me it works well.
You never know what you are swinging over until you dig it, but after digging thousands upon thousands of targets good and bad I have found this is an excellent way to tell a lot of the trash from good...a high percentage method I call it.
I use a few other techniques to narrow it down but this is my basic hunting style and it has helped me dig more quality targets that probably should have been allowed by law while leaving a lot of the trash still in the ground."

For me this seems to work on most good targets, coins, pendants, silver and gold jewelry and more.
I am not wasting my energy digging trash like I used to but still find lots of great targets despite that, more if you can believe it using this high percentage method.
More importantly I am still having fun with very little frustration and I usually hunt sites with extreme amounts of trash and iron.
As I said even if I am missing things, and the numbers say I sure might be, that fact doesn't matter to me because I still have such a high success rate targeting and digging mostly the better targets I come across including gold and silver jewelry in those oh so trashy sites I spend so much of my time hunting.

In about 6.5 years hunting I have found 35 gold targets in the dirt with several different detectors but also including two Tesoros...a way better record than I ever thought possible when I started.
I found a few back in the days when I used to dig most trash, I found the bulk of them after I switched to this higher percentage method.
Here are all of them with the areas they came in...the numbers are from either in the ground or air testing with a Fisher detector after.
There are 4 more I found after I gathered up most in that large pic with the areas they came in also.

So far my tally is...

8....Foil
12...Nickel
6.....Tab
7.....Zinc
1.....Iron
1.....Silver dollar range because it was a complete pocket watch mixed with many metals

Most of those tab area targets were found in areas with a bazillion tabs at the same range and numbers but I left most of them all in the ground because all those tab area gold targets acted differently than most of those problematic tabs...every one.

You have to find the best way to do this for you....this is just the best way I figured out how to do it for me.
I still dig lots of trash but nowadays mostly just the solid ones...I dug a train car load of trash in the past getting to this point but you haven't...yet.
Everyone has different thresholds for trash digging, as time goes on that can change as it did for me.


Look at the pics and where gold can possibly come in and remember....
Then figure out where your threshold is and what you don't mind missing depending on where your comfort levels are in your settings.

I started out my career with higher disc too, I rarely went much below nickel until I read a post from a hunter that stated the greatest gold find he ever had was in foil.
Then I turned it down but soon enough the amount of trash volume grew to large for me to be comfortable with so I went on a mission to find a better way.
I believe I did and for you soon enough you will too but remember this took me time to get to this point and much more experience than you might have right now.
Just try different things, take it all into account and figure it out.
As your skills and experience in this hobby grow so will your treasure volume...including gold.

 

[Fletch88]

It will work fine but the fact of the matter is you will lose a certain percentage of gold doing that. There are no shortcuts you digging jewelry but with a good VDI you can focus around pulltabs. You still have to dig them to be 100% sure.

 

[Terry Soloman]

With respect, there are NO secret settings or techniques for finding gold, and not digging screw caps and pull tabs. You set your discrimination at just a touch below "Nickel," and train your ears to hear the "fuzzy" or "ragged" tones of aluminum. Once you have dug a few hundred pieces of canslaw and pulltabs, you realize gold gives a clean "bell like" tone you just can't miss. That does NOT mean you'll be right every time.

If you are hunting gold, you have to dig everything from Nickel to foil. Just get it in your mind that your first 30-minutes to an hour will be dig everything until you get tired. Then you can spend the next hour or two just digging clad and silver if you wish. Gold hunting is not for out-of-shape or lazy detectorist's. I will catch hell for saying this, but it's the truth. People spend lot's of money on machines that are supposed to tell them what they are digging, not realizing they won't perform magic.

If you want to find gold, set your discrimination just a hair below Nickel. If you are not digging nickel's you will not find gold. End of story.

 

[digger27]

With respect, there are NO secret settings or techniques for finding gold, and not digging screw caps and pull tabs.
You set your discrimination at just a touch below "Nickel," and train your ears to hear the "fuzzy" or "ragged" tones of aluminum. Once you have dug a few hundred pieces of canslaw and pulltabs, you realize gold gives a clean "bell like" tone you just can't miss. That does NOT mean you'll be right every time.

If you are hunting gold, you have to dig everything from Nickel to foil. Just get it in your mind that your first 30-minutes to an hour will be dig everything until you get tired. Then you can spend the next hour or two just digging clad and silver if you wish. Gold hunting is not for out-of-shape or lazy detectorist's. I will catch hell for saying this, but it's the truth. People spend lot's of money on machines that are supposed to tell them what they are digging, not realizing they won't perform magic.

If you want to find gold, set your discrimination just a hair below Nickel. If you are not digging nickel's you will not find gold. End of story.

With more respect...I don't agree.
You can find gold without digging nickels at all since so much of it comes in at foil.
I also do dig some tabs, a few screw caps, other junk too looking for it but I cut out digging 80-85% of the trash I come across...and still find it.
I found way more since I started doing it that way.

There are methods and techniques for doing this without digging all trash signals and be successful, you just don't believe in them but that's ok...to each their own.

 

[JoeDirty]

Tabs seem to have a signature sound. I can name the tab before i dig it. If gold is smooth then it should sound different. I still dig most everything but i can name the tabs. I did a lot of foil because some of it sounds smooth and its true, some gold comes in at foil, i didn't know it came in at iron though. I have a lot to learn. I wanted everyones opinion that is why I mentioned it. Also i don't just set the knob and go. I examine each target. But it is true, you don't know until you dig.

 

[JoeDirty]

Ha! I went outside with my wedding band last night, It rings up as a tab. Dropped it and two tabs, well without my headphones guess what? They sound to much alike to me. I will have to go back to digging tabs. I don't have enough experience to be playing around like that. I do normally use headphones for better audio, and to be stealthy. Just kidding!