bigscoop
Gold Member
- Jun 4, 2010
- 13,376
- 8,699
- Detector(s) used
- Older blue Excal with full mods, Equinox 800.
- Primary Interest:
- All Treasure Hunting
So I'm out in the trenches about chest deep the other day playing with the new Sand Shark when all of a sudden I get a nice solid tone with a tight signature, and naturally, right away I'm thinking, ring! So I center the target, mark the coil with my toes, move the coil out of the way and then take a scoop with the big stealth. Hu, nothing in my scoop, so I recheck the hole and nothing, not so much as burp. And so, here we go....
A quick sweep of the area and I find the target again, this time to the right of the hole which a bit odd since I scoop with my left hand, “How in the world did it get clear over there?”
No doubt this was a dense target and I'm still thinking “ring” when I go after it a second time, then a third time as now it's on my left, then a forth time as now it's back in the hole, and after about eight or ten tries I'm starting to get a bit frustrated and more determined then ever.
Anyway, I finally locate this target again and now it's at the front of the hole near the top so I move to the side of the hole so I can try to scrape it into the scoop with my foot, and then I raise the scoop to find nothing. When I recheck with the detector again this damn target is now another foot in front of the hole and I'm starting to get aggravated. In a last ditch effort to capture this target I locate it again with the coil, center it, and then I use my foot to see if I can feel the darn thing, which I can't, so I run the coil over that spot again and the target is gone, not there anymore.
I'm shaking my head at this point, I mean I've chased some tough targets but this thing was rating way up there, nearly a certified walk-off at this point. In the past I've chased sinker on leaders, chains, and other items that can be easily pulled back out of the scoop as is being raised but this thing never once offered that tell-tell tug as I was raising the scoop. And why, when I finally had it on the surface, couldn't I feel it with my foot after carefully centering the target? That's when I though to myself, “because it's not there?” But how can that be? Am I having a machine issue of some sort?
Now I learned a big lesson when I finally raised my detector to inspect the coil, the one ounce sinker dangling from two feet of fishing line quickly solving the mystery, another three or feet of heavy fishing line now wrapped around the coil and coil wing nut. Apparently every time I moved the scoop out of the way so I could take another scoop of sand I was moving the target to a new location. And this, my friends, is how really dense targets can easily avoid capture.
And, no, a mask isn't an option in my sandy and cloudy world. But I sure wish it was!
A quick sweep of the area and I find the target again, this time to the right of the hole which a bit odd since I scoop with my left hand, “How in the world did it get clear over there?”
No doubt this was a dense target and I'm still thinking “ring” when I go after it a second time, then a third time as now it's on my left, then a forth time as now it's back in the hole, and after about eight or ten tries I'm starting to get a bit frustrated and more determined then ever.
Anyway, I finally locate this target again and now it's at the front of the hole near the top so I move to the side of the hole so I can try to scrape it into the scoop with my foot, and then I raise the scoop to find nothing. When I recheck with the detector again this damn target is now another foot in front of the hole and I'm starting to get aggravated. In a last ditch effort to capture this target I locate it again with the coil, center it, and then I use my foot to see if I can feel the darn thing, which I can't, so I run the coil over that spot again and the target is gone, not there anymore.
I'm shaking my head at this point, I mean I've chased some tough targets but this thing was rating way up there, nearly a certified walk-off at this point. In the past I've chased sinker on leaders, chains, and other items that can be easily pulled back out of the scoop as is being raised but this thing never once offered that tell-tell tug as I was raising the scoop. And why, when I finally had it on the surface, couldn't I feel it with my foot after carefully centering the target? That's when I though to myself, “because it's not there?” But how can that be? Am I having a machine issue of some sort?
Now I learned a big lesson when I finally raised my detector to inspect the coil, the one ounce sinker dangling from two feet of fishing line quickly solving the mystery, another three or feet of heavy fishing line now wrapped around the coil and coil wing nut. Apparently every time I moved the scoop out of the way so I could take another scoop of sand I was moving the target to a new location. And this, my friends, is how really dense targets can easily avoid capture.
And, no, a mask isn't an option in my sandy and cloudy world. But I sure wish it was!
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Found a penny today!yay...
