It comes with experience, focus, machine certainly helps, and drive.
One can go fishing and never get one using the same bait/lure as the next person-it all comes down to the way its done -with a tad bit of luck.
Now I have read/heard a lot about the red clays of hunts down your way, yes a PP, and a good machine takes out a lot of time wasted digging out a signal.
I thing that helps me is a real strong magnet. I lost one that I had made up, and now have a different version.
The hand digger Leache version is the flat magnets attached to the hilt then wrapped in electoral tape. Reason for wrapping is to wipe off the iron fillings that come out of the dirt-fine sharp-sliver like.
The first one was a small vitamin container-epoxied the magnets and a wand all together and rubbed it in and around the iron infested dirt and the retrieval of the good target was better.
The linked in PP that run like a detector were great, discrimination mode cut out a lot of needless time.