Experience and learning curve with different machines hunting old farm homesteads?

[gringochase]

Hello gang. I am relatively new to detecting. I have been using my Ace 350 for a little over a year now and feel like i have a good feel for it. I have found a few silvers and a handful of neat odds and ends. I have a question but let me first give a little background. I live in south texas and have access to a handful of old farmsteads if you will. I have hunted several now and my experience has consistently gone like this:

I get out to the property very excited and have little to no discrimination and start digging almost everything. Within an hour after finding lots of trash, i start marking off lots of ticks on the lower end to narrow my search. By lunch time, I have all but the last three notches turned off so I am only digging "quality" targets. Even then, i still end up digging lots of trash and junk and usually end the day a bit disappointed and frustrated. Large aluminum cans and larger pieces of junk still register as if they were pure silver.

one other thing, I don't have a LOT of time to hunt with my busier life and other hobbies so i am generally trying to find silver coins and other more valuable targets.

So my questions are: 1) am i getting frustrated because of the limitations of my machine 2) would a more expensive machine like the AT Max, once i learned it, produce lest frustrating results or would it be a similar experience 3) is this just the nature of the beast when hunting trashy farmsteads and i need to accept it

Any advice or suggestions is most welcome. I enjoy the hobby and will keep at it but i want to have realistic expectations of my experiences. I also would like to know if more money ( a better machine) is going to greatly enhance my enjoyment.


Michael

 

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[Tpmetal]

An upgrade and smaller coil will help in the trash, but generally it is the nature of the beast. You can usually tell cans by how big the target sounds in pin point(not sure about your detector) or raising the coil off the ground and you swing over the target. If you can get 6 to 12 inches above the ground and still pick up that target chances are its a large target. Same for large iron, which will ring up nicely most of the time as well. As for trash, if its non ferrous on an old home site, you gotta dig it. Also swing the target from multiple directions and you can learn more about a target or what may be near it.

 

[luvsdux]

In my opinion, it's partly location, location, location. Old homesteads/farmsteads were worked and populated by folks that were generally poor and didn't have much in the way of money, they held on to what they had so very little was lost. Generally there's lots of trash and old items as you've already found. Old picnic areas, church yards, places where many folks often congregated are usually better areas for coins etc. As mentioned, large aluminum and other large trash are an aggravating part of the hobby.
luvsdux

 

[Terry Soloman]

Hello and Welcome to T-Net! You are experiencing normal conditions that every one of us encounters. The answer about the machine end of it is simple. Yes, it is time to upgrade if you want to get "deeper" into the hobby. In general, you need between $550 - $750, to move to the "intermediate" level in the hobby. What do you get for this investment? Better discrimination tools, sensitivity, ground balance, and depth. You will dig less garbage, but you will still dig aluminum if you are hunting Gold.

Here are some machines to consider:

Fisher F75 - a high performance VLF detector

Garrett AT Pro

Garrett AT Max

Makro Racer

Minelab Equinox 600

Teknetics T2 Classic

Tesoro Outlaw

XP Deus - a high performance lightweight, wireless detector!

White's MX Sport

 

[RTR]

Before BANKS WERE ESTABLISHED . First bank in America was established in 1791 .Find a structure that pre dates 1791.And they buried what they had in the ground.

 

[Texas Jay]

Before BANKS WERE ESTABLISHED . First bank in America was established in 1791 .Find a structure that pre dates 1791.And they buried what they had in the ground.

It's also very important to learn the year of the first bank in the area that you are going to detect. For instance, the first bank in my county wasn't established until the 1870s although there were many people living in town and out in the country by that time. The nearest bank was hundreds of miles away and people didn't have direct deposit or bank-by-mail accounts back then. Even when banks were established across the country, many people still didn't trust them so they buried their money in a safe location near their homes. The Great Depression of the 1920s and '30s gave people even more solid reasons to mistrust banks and bankers so the old post-hole banks were revived.
~Texas Jay

 

[Charlie P. (NY)]

You can set $500 to $700 machines to only trigger on "keepers" . . . mostly. Any machine will give false signals sometimes. They just detect the relative conductivity of what is near the coil - an aluminum bottle cap will probably give a good signal with any detector. BUT, you can learn to interpret the audio vs. display and sweep from various angles and at various heights to see if it holds true.

And don't forget - sometimes coins may be above, beside or under junk metal. Swinging from different angles and approaches may help spot them.

It also depends where I am . If I am in a picnic grove I may notch out pullltabs and steel bottle caps just to keep my sanity. In the woods or old homesteads - no notch or mask.

With my F75 I can spend a day digging nothing but coins. I have done it several times (it was a treat when I first got it after an analog detector) in a park that has summer carnivals and LOTS of trash. But I also probably "passed" on a few coins and any jewelry. That's the choice you make. So I tend to run with no notch and very minimal iron mask and judge each target myself. Digging anything even suspiciously "good". Still get junk, but also the older, deeper coins and the occasional ring. I also dig a lot of nickels and I believe that is because other coin shooters pass on them.

 

[gringochase]

thanks for the info guys, that is very helpful. I will likely start saving for a better machine and keep optimistic!

michael