What We’re Truly Up Against

[ColonelDan]

After several decades of hunting beaches here in Florida, like most of you, I’ve read many accounts of what factors determine or hinder our success.

However, I’ve concluded that the bottom line is this:

Big beach

Little Coil

Tiny targets

Success or failure, I always keep this in mind.

Just the view from my foxhole...

 

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[Rum Tide]

Florida has 1,350 miles of charted coastline. NOAA calculates 8,436 miles of Florida coastline when you include the tidal areas. Makes finding a needle in a haystack with a metal detector sound extremely easy.

 

[Deep1]

A little perspective:
That's 2,178,900,000 square feet.
2.1789 BILLION square feet.
If the average beach width in Florida is 100 yards.

Let's say you what to work a 1 mile beach that's a 100 yards wide, 1,614,000 square feet, using a 12 inch loop at a 2 second swing rate covering 6 foot path with no overlap.
You're going to make 269,000 passes X 2 seconds=149.44 hours. 6.22 days with no breaks to cover a mile of beach, not counting the time you are digging targets.
To detect Florida's beaches it would only take you 201,750 hours, that translates to a little over 23 years.

There's a few things you can do to increase your chances of success, like knowing which areas of the beach are more productive.
But all in all, it is blind dumb ass luck when it comes to beach hunting.
It's everywhere on the beach, from the top of the beach in soft sand to past the surf line.
The most random place to hunt of all.
When I step onto a beach, I'm in gold mode. I'm thinking, seeing, feeling, hearing?, and tasting gold.
My detector is my dowsing rod leading me to gold. I go where it wants to go.

 

[CASPER-2]

Come up this way - where you mostly have just 3 months of hunting when beaches may 31st to sept 1st when beaches are officially open
sure you can hunt year round but waters are cold before june 1st - so very few people will go in water before then and after labor day
kids are back in school and only go to beaches on weekends IF hot and sunny - even in summer - you have to take into account
very windy or stormy days which prevent swimmers entering the water
down in Fla. - you could possibly swim or enter water 365 days a year unless very severe weather - even then I have seen tourist go in
because they paid to go down and will go in even when bad - I know I have
on good days - your big beaches can see prob twice as many people than ours - as cold as your waters can get is still warmer than
ours can get on a good day. Most beaches I go to now a days up here - are buoyed - so limited to how far you can go out - lot of
spots limit you to 6-7 feet deep - most people only go in around waist deep - specially if water is still cold - most yrs water don't warm
till july/aug. New England coast from Ct. to Maine is not a continual beach - it is made up of smaller ones with a larger one here and there
One of largest is on Cape cod - but is the national sea shore - no detecting allowed
Cape cod bay is large but tide goes out far so land hunters can pepper also at low tides.
Ive done pretty good on my trips to Fla. - I wonder if I lived down there just how good I would do.
http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/members/29748-albums1617.html
and this isn't everything - I don't have any secret spots - I hit same as the locals do
only difference is I dig it all - I think many discriminate some of the smaller gold

 

[dewcon4414]

I get a chuckle every time I read some one fills their pouch with gold every time out.....while on their lunch break....their secret....I read the beach. For the most part here in Fl we are always changing the recent drops. Soooo just how deep of a detector do you need? Chances are if it buried....it’s buried. It helps to be on the beach enough to know what the tides and people are doing. Sometimes even grinding day after day nets you change. Some people believe all kinds of stuff is being lost every day. Big busy beaches you have a better chance someone might loose some gold....I wouldn’t bet on it happening every day. Then competition.....we have a lot of people swinging a coil....and most wont miss the sound of a nice size ring. No one gets it all....but 13 people in the water 4 to 8 hours certainly can put a hurt on it. The real hunters are the ones finding stuff ....when there is no stuff to find.

 

[LawrencetheMDer]

Another perspective:
It has been reported in Britain that 11% of wedding rings are lost every 5 years. That comes out to be about 2.2% of wedding rings lost every year. If we assume ring loss follows a similar projection in the USA, this would have some interesting implications which are explored first here!

In 2018, there were 61.24 million married couples in the USA. Assuming that, say, 80% of married people wear a wedding ring; this suggests that about 2.7 Million wedding rings are lost each year in the USA.

In 2011, 70% of engagement wedding bands were made of white gold in the USA. I’m confident most of the rest were platinum or yellow gold. The few remaining metals would be titanium, tungsten, stainless steel, etc., - those off-metal wedding rings we find metal detecting.

The recommended maximum number of rings to wear is 2 or 3 rings across both hands, ignoring cluster rings. If we assume that the average adult wears 2 rings (194 million adults in USA), somewhere in the neighborhood of 8 ½ million rings of all type are lost each year in the USA.

Given that I found only 11 gold rings in 2018 and only 8 in 2019, so far, I’m going to stop writing now and get my detector and go find a few more gold rings…I know they’re out there!

Happy Hunting

 

[RustyGold]

Unfortunately, I must be making it a habit of swinging the coil over where the gold rings are not.

 

[ARC]

Pull tabs are rare nowadays right ?

:P

 

[IDXMonster]

Unfortunately, I must be making it a habit of swinging the coil over where the gold rings are not.

You and me both Rusty, you and me both...

 

[dewcon4414]

Lawrence ..... i hope you are wrong about the WHITE gold. Otherwise everyone needs to bury one...... flat then on edge in very damp sand. Thats an eye opener as to why your treasure chest is full of YELLOW gold.

 

[CASPER-2]

Another perspective:
It has been reported in Britain that 11% of wedding rings are lost every 5 years. That comes out to be about 2.2% of wedding rings lost every year. If we assume ring loss follows a similar projection in the USA, this would have some interesting implications which are explored first here!

In 2018, there were 61.24 million married couples in the USA. Assuming that, say, 80% of married people wear a wedding ring; this suggests that about 2.7 Million wedding rings are lost each year in the USA.

In 2011, 70% of engagement wedding bands were made of white gold in the USA. I’m confident most of the rest were platinum or yellow gold. The few remaining metals would be titanium, tungsten, stainless steel, etc., - those off-metal wedding rings we find metal detecting.

The recommended maximum number of rings to wear is 2 or 3 rings across both hands, ignoring cluster rings. If we assume that the average adult wears 2 rings (194 million adults in USA), somewhere in the neighborhood of 8 ½ million rings of all type are lost each year in the USA.

Given that I found only 11 gold rings in 2018 and only 8 in 2019, so far, I’m going to stop writing now and get my detector and go find a few more gold rings…I know they’re out there!

Happy Hunting

something else to think about - most times beach size matters - and crowd size on those beaches matter
but i know guys that have killed it over the yrs on very small beaches - mostly older ones that have had yrs to accumulate more rings
but no matter where or what size - think about this - if only one gold ring was lost a year at beach you are hitting - just one
if you have a beach that is 100 yrs old - then you could theoretically have 100 gold there = that is something
50 yr old beach = 50 gold rings - now a fair of beach ive hit over the years just having 1 gold lost per would be low
of course you could have a spot that none were lost a year or two - then again you could have another spot where 20+ are lost a year
take South Beach Fla. - 100s are probably lost a year - ive gotten my fair share down there and Im only a tourist
i have a small town beach - was popular long ago - gets almost no one now adays but i think i average 1 gold there a year
years ive gotten none - yrs of gotten 2 - think the most was 3 one yr

 

[LawrencetheMDer]

Lawrence ..... i hope you are wrong about the WHITE gold. Otherwise everyone needs to bury one...... flat then on edge in very damp sand. Thats an eye opener as to why your treasure chest is full of YELLOW gold.

Good stats, but you're right - I collated a bunch of my gold over the past 4-5 yrs (in part to buy a Nox 800) and there was a pile of yellow gold bands...interesting...appears that people with yellow gold bands are more likely to lose their rings in the surf and sand...

Wait!! News flash; just realized that the wife confiscates all my white gold and platinum pieces to wear all over her hands/fingers. I guess the thing now is to wear like 3-4 thin white gold bands and diamonds on a single finger. Some of her friends wear thin silver bands on a single finger...poor things (they don't have a loving hubby who MDs). Sampling bias...Never mind.

 

[bigscoop]

After having hunted north, south, east, west, both saltwater and freshwater over all types of bottoms, I've come to the following conclusion. Most of the gold is deeper then what most hunters can really access, and most of that deeper gold that is accessible is too subject to misidentification, and that most hunters never realize it's even under their coil. And last, but not least, it's nearly impossible to consistently find gold when it's just too deep to be detected, (i.e., where and when you hunt.) I've learned a lot from guys like OBN and many others who do find that gold consistently and there's a reason a why they have that kind of consistent success.

 

[Billieg]

Unfortunately, I must be making it a habit of swinging the coil over where the gold rings are not.

That's because you are too busy l oo kin at the little beach bodies walking by.....

 

[A2coins]

That's because you are too busy l oo kin at the little beach bodies walking by.....

There it is lol