It’s a fair question, right?
Me, I’m inherently lazy and don’t like digging deep holes but, when I’m testing a metal detector well, enough said…I have to dig everything!
I love when the metal detector “shows me” the target is not going to be too deep!
But then, how often do you get fooled by something like a huge piece of iron or a large piece of “dross” and the signal sounds just so good you have to keep digging.
OK…the thought of just leaving it might occur to you. But then, the “what-if” crazy thought runs through your mind. So you trace back your steps and depending how careful a digger you are may determine finding the same spot again. It has happened: I’ve given up on some targets and later had that remorse of conscience and gone back to dig the find out once and for all.
I’ve even had the same thing occur unintentionally! It’s happened a few times wet sand detecting with a GPX detector…I’ve dug and dug and dug but then the spade length runs out!
So I’ve had to leave finds behind unwillingly a few times.
Another time on the dry sand area a great signal had me digging foot after foot and at the two foot plus level what did I find…a flippin’ spade! Some kid had probably taken the garden spade to the beach! I laughed out loud heartily for a few moments by the sheer comedy of it all. Good news was I didn’t find the bucket to go with it.
I’ve also dug deeply too and found unopened beers in tins…always welcome! But what I hate digging are the empties and the tabs. But then on the plus side I’ve often used Excalibur to great rewards on the beaches and especially after storms! Even without the storms, I’ve dug to a huge depth of sixteen to eighteen inches for single coins... I mean that’s serious depth!
Just recently using E-TRAC a faint signal was heard but the audio was good, level and consistent and I began to dig down through the soft brown earth of woodland. After nine or ten inches or so I was blocked by a large root which covered the find and I had to literally burrow underneath the root to find the target! A few inches more and I felt a coin and the startling thing about it was, it was on edge… standing upright which was a great testament to the E-TRAC to signal the coin, a Gun Money penny was over a foot deep.
Nearly all searchers rate “depth” as the most important feature right? I mean the first question asked of any new metal detector is, “How deep does it go?” One of these days I’m going to answer that question and say, “It can go five feet on a coin”
“What! You mean it goes five feet deep? I’m not going to dig that deep!”
“Well, how deep would you dig?”
Good Hunting
Des Dunne
Comments
To get "deeper", can be achieved in a few ways: use of a larger 10.5" coil will help naturally.
But also watch the sensitivity levels that can be achieved and ground balance carefully having set the sensitivity first.
Do an Auto Noise Cancel as well but no more than one time at the beginning.
Use a good headphone and listen for the quieter softer sounds (headphones help a lot) because they can often be the deeper items. It's easy to hear the big sounds and quite often they are the more recent larger modern items.
So train your ear to partially ignore some of the large sounding targets and listen for the 'whisper' signals…the X-TERRA 705 is very good at accenting those.
Des Dunne