Just curious what state you live in?
I live in Michigan where the soil is rather sandy in parts and other parts has a lot of clay. Many of my oldest coins were only around 7 inches deep and some rather shallow.
I hunted in Michigan, north of Detroit around the Lake St. Clair area...beautiful rich black dirt.
Also in Kansas and Missouri with pretty much the same kind of soil.
Here in Birmingham Ala. I am in hell, red oxide filled clay in about 90% of the areas I hunt in, some areas do have a little better black dirt for the top few inches, the sites where the black dirt runs deeper are rare but special.
Even in the black stuff I GB in the mid 60's or so, it can get up to the low 80's around here in the bad red stuff.
As bad as that mineralization is that is not the biggest problem, actual real bits of iron is from microscopic to small nails and larger plus slag iron that got mixed into most of the fill dirt used around here building up the city.
That slag was dumped into the dirt from the steel and iron industries that built this city long ago then spread out everywhere.
Plus most parks I hunt were originally sites where old homes and entire neighborhoods stood, if you ever hunt old home sites with knocked down houses and see what you are up against regarding iron that is what most of the parks I hunt are like...lots of the lawns I hunt too.
Not much I can do about any of that as long as I am living here so I learned some tips, techniques, a new language and methods to deal with it all.
My F70 works great here, once I learned some new behaviors, and the Compadre does too although not very deep.
My Vaq did ok but it seems to like iron a bit too much so even though in Kansas it was fun and great to use here it makes me dig more iron than I want to so I traded it away to a dealer in Missouri who will enjoy it and got a new coil for my F70 and a new Mojave.
A great decision all around for me...both started finding me extremely iron masked treasures in this devil dirt right out of the box.
I was hoping for just a little bit better performance from this Mojave in my dirt than my Compadre but it has surpassed my expectations by a mile so I am very pleased.
For me this one is the best Tesoro I ever used in this state and I still don't know how far it can go...but I am having fun trying to find out.
This will give you an idea of what I am up against in most of my sites.
I have met a few guys walking around my neighborhood doing curb strips that told me they tried doing this hobby years ago but gave up quickly...all this iron chased them away.
Wusses...when the going gets tough the tough...figure it out.
For those that hunt in more normal conditions be happy you do and appreciate it on every hunt...I sure did when we moved out to Kansas for three years.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=sejzlCo9rsY
