Iron Patch said:
Muddyhandz said:
Digger said:
I'm sensing a little inter-hobby rivalry?
I do a fair amount of relic hunting when I have nothing better to do. To each their own, but I find relic hunting to be less of a challenge than coin-shooting, and a bit on the boring side. But hey, thats just me. It may have to do with location. I happen to live in an area that has a very lively past so finding relics takes little more than picking a field nearby. Heck some of my locations doesn't even require a metal detector as you can eyeball relics on top the ground. Not like that would take much of a detector to find.
Here is a picture of just some of the some 400+ musket and mini-balls showing I do relic hunt.
You use the term cherry picking as if its a bad thing. Actually I believe its more of an envy thing because cherry picking done right takes a lot of experience. I'm done with my days of digging it all, and I've got boxes and boxes of worthless garbage to show for it. My time has become much more valuable than when I was new to the hobby. First and foremost of importance for the cherry picker is the right detector. Beep & Dig don't cut the mustard here, and experience takes second place to a good detector. I understand that in many of the other areas of metal detecting experience take top spot of importance, but in cherry picking experience won't get you squat without a good detector. One thing to remember is that while any good well featured detector can do relic hunting, not any detector makes a good cherry picker. I feel its better to have a little more versatility than limiting myself to a dig-it-all for all hunting.
You often see people saying if you discriminate at all you're missing stuff. Yes I agree, you're missing the junk for the most part, and isn't that the job of discrimination? Personally I've found this to be BS. Sounds all cool to say "I'll walk behind you cherry pickers and pull out the good stuff." but that would only be the case of an inexperienced cherry picker or someone trying to cherry pick using a beep & dig machine. Oh ya I know, you have this amazing ability to tell the difference between a clad penny and wheat on your beep and dig no ID detector. BS. I know a lot of very experienced generic detectors users who will admit they can tell a good target from a bad most of the time, but thats about the limits of being able to identify a target.
I understand that relics hunters have much less need for a technically advanced detector since they pretty much dig anything that beeps, but that sure doesn't apply for most of the rest of us.
Experience will beat out any fancy machine.

My first 10 years I was a coin hunter and that got boring seeing thousands of the same coins and to finally hit a key date was like watching grass grow. I EVOLVED into a relic hunter. Worthless garbage? If you only knew buddy.

You think that because you have a great machine, you'll only leave the junk behind and cherry pick the good stuff? Iffy signals are the key here and I have taken my old "piece of crap" detector to hunted out parks and BECAUSE I am a relic hunter, I dug up the valuable non coin objects and found coins with bottle caps and the deeper "junky" signals, do in fact turn out to be good. No matter how much you think you know, You will NEVER know what's completely buried underground.
Overall, I beg to differ on the cherry picking part as I can out cherry pick hunters (with new expensive machines) with my old Fisher backed with 23 years of heavy detecting experience, and I do it quite regularly. The last competition hunt I went to, I found the most tokens, (for prizes) the most planted silver, and I almost found ALL the $2 coins that were in the Twoonie hunt! I was the only one using a 20 year old machine.
All my friends usually look at me with a smirk when some guy comes up to us bragging about his new $1500 machine. When he goes home skunked we all have a good laugh!
We shouldn't be fighting over this but the message I want to put out there is that you don't need to buy an expensive machine and with some hard work, you will learn your tones and be able to do quite well. Often better than those who rely on their screens and have forked out lots of cash for all the bells and whistles. EXPERIENCE is the most important thing here.
P.S. If you want to get rid of all that worthless junk you have from the "easy" relic hunting you did, then you can send it here. I'll pay for the shipping.

Dave.
So are you saying there's absolutely nothing my Explorer can do better than your old detector? How about I'll start with one.
My Explorer has more accurate target ID (sound) at its max depth. If you've never used one I guess there is not much point to this because you wouldn't know just how good it is. I used to be fooled so much by deep iron with my GTI, fooled or at least had to chase it just to be sure. The explorer on the other had will false on shallow iron but has the strange ability to cancel/null it out when it gets deep. Most other detectors (actually all) I've ever used very deep nails are high tone hits, not for my explorer. On the average hunt at my early sites I might chase a few larger iron hits on purpose, but don't dig any small iron, none at all. My disc. setting is fairly close to zero (-14 of a possible -16) and of course I'm like everyone else, things get missed, but I hunt fields. I think a better way to put it, is do you think you could see targets I wouldn't be able to? I think not, and in all the guests I've had here have never been shown a target I can''t see, but have done that back to them many times. It's always the same scenario, a target very masked in iron. I say there's a good target there, they can't see it, I cut the plug and sound gets better, then they hear it. Anyway, there's not much point in going on, but I can't quite understand how you discount modern detectors just because of features. That would only make sense if they packed the old guts into the new units and added the bells and whistles, which I don't think is true. Also, it seems with these new detectors you automatically associate the term cherry picking and imply just because someone has a new detector the first thing they do is get home and spend an hour putting some type of fancy coin pattern together. You'd probably be surprised just how similar my detector and detecting is to yours. I use high sens., how disc., and dig! If I get in an iron patch that I have punched pretty quiet then I'll start digging some part tones and see what happens. They are very low % signals, but I guarantee when I'm to that point no one with any detector is coming in and scooping some good hits without hunting the same way. I have a term for it, call it "ripping the place appart." So now that I hope i made the point that we might not be much different in how we dig, the difference I believe is how much small iron I can leave behind because of the technology. The explorer does everything else very well too but it's digging every hole for a non iron item that is the winning ticket for me.
Obviously this was bound to happen. I was trying to leave brand names out as to not offend but now I've bothered someone that I respect. I actually had two brand names in my head when I said cherry pickers and Mine lab was NOT one of them. I'm not going to reveal those two brand names here because I already have enough people that hate me on this forum. Whatever.
I have a cockiness towards cherry pickers after they claim to have cleaned out a site and I work it good and find all the stuff they left behind. You see, I am the left over king as everything in my city was hammered well before my time and I am a hard worker and do not praise those who waltz in looking for easy pickings. Sorry, but that's me and my attitude. When I see a guy working a park with a fancy machine, it only makes me want to work harder to prove to myself of what he didn't pick up. Other people get discouraged when someone beats them to a site. Not me. I know of my capabilities and feel confident with the old Fisher.
I'm someone who presses the mute button when commercials come on while watching T.V. Treasure hunting magazines and forums are filled with hype and advertising and I DO NOT buy into it! Whites is famous for taking the same machine and slapping a bigger coil on it and calling it a new name, boasting that it goes deep. There, now the Whites users will be mad at me.
I'm sick of this place! Whatever, I'll calm down.

I could tell you that my old fisher does everything your explorer does and I have learned how not to get fooled on small iron and don't anymore. I could tell you that I have gotten many deep signals that expensive machines couldn't even get a whisper from. It doesn't matter because I do not want to get into anymore arguments on this forum! I see all kinds of people bragging about their DFX's, E-tracs, etc. I have never got offended and said "oh yeah, my old fisher is better". Everyone is going to brag about what their using, especially if they paid a lot for it!
To this day, I would never trade my Suzuki Swift in and buy a Cadillac. That little car has so many advantages than that over-rated gas gussler has. Lets keep it at that.

I'm sorry this happened. If it works for you, then that's all that matters.
I will NEVER talk about brands of detectors ever again on this forum and this is my last post regarding that subject. Since it is my last, then LONG LIVE THE FISHER 1266X!

Happy hunting,
Dave.