Going deep..

[Phishfarmer]

I've been using a Deus for a year and a half and generally I have to deal with plenty of modern trash. It came with the 11" coil and later I bought the Elliptical HF coil which I pretty much exclusively use.

I have an area where there are a lot of bullets but they are deep. I think the place was hunted but only the targets 10" deep or less were found. I'm finding bullets at about 12-14". Often I don't hear them, I've been using a custom program that uses the X-Y screen and I will get a horizontal blip on the graph and will dig there. There will be something there about a third of the time. My hearing is not great so it could be that there is sound but I don't hear it. I do have the volume on 9.

What settings would maximize the depth without concern about trash? There is not much trash here; almost every find I have is a keeper.

I would try the 11" coil but there are little saplings everywhere 8 - 12" apart and the elliptical goes between them.

Thanks for any advice.

This area is where trenches were so relics are deep. I know most folks have seen the civil war photos but here are a couple from where I'm hunting...

 

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[dirtlooter]

what freq are you using? even with just 28 kz, I was digging deeper stuff with my round coil. I figure you are going slow with reactivity cranked down and all of that. audio response I think can make some signals pop better. I am still learning as you know. sounds like you have access to a great site, just need to get a little deeper. Smokeythecat does pretty well with the highest freq. some day I hope to get the elliptical coil also, for the same reason for around the trees etc.

 

[smokeythecat]

Speaking of me, I use the 9" elliptical exclusively now. It will nail a minie ball down at least 12" in good soil. I don't have a very good comparison because 99% of the places I dig the dirt is highly mineralized. In the Culpeper, VA red horrendous dirt, you don't get the depth, however since there are huts there, I generally shave 3" of dirt off the suspected area after getting a good hit, and then dig. Using this method I cleaned up at a small sized fire pit today. This is my one place that has been hit for 60 years now. Had a nice talk with the owner today, he said when they first moved in they would find these dark green glass bottles all through the woods. ARRRGGG! Forty something years too late for me! I have only found a few small inks and a slightly taller bottle intact there.

 

[Rawhide]

I would suggest the Garret ATX.

 

[Phishfarmer]

Smokey, I lived in Culpeper for six or eight years; I know about that red clay out there. I recently posted a picture of bottles I found under a house I bought there. That dirt is baaad and there are plenty of hot rocks there too.

If the frequency is higher don't I get less depth but greater resolution? So with deep targets and little/no trash shouldn't I use low frequency and little if any discrimination? I've been thinking about getting a used beep n go like a Tesoro for cases like this.

 

[Bart@Big Boys Hobbies]

I've been using a Deus for a year and a half and generally I have to deal with plenty of modern trash. It came with the 11" coil and later I bought the Elliptical HF coil which I pretty much exclusively use.

I have an area where there are a lot of bullets but they are deep. I think the place was hunted but only the targets 10" deep or less were found. I'm finding bullets at about 12-14". Often I don't hear them, I've been using a custom program that uses the X-Y screen and I will get a horizontal blip on the graph and will dig there. There will be something there about a third of the time. My hearing is not great so it could be that there is sound but I don't hear it. I do have the volume on 9.

What settings would maximize the depth without concern about trash? There is not much trash here; almost every find I have is a keeper.

I would try the 11" coil but there are little saplings everywhere 8 - 12" apart and the elliptical goes between them.

Thanks for any advice.

This area is where trenches were so relics are deep. I know most folks have seen the civil war photos but here are a couple from where I'm hunting...

View attachment 1574920

View attachment 1574921

Sounds like an amazing place to hunt. Any way to cut the saplings down or get permission to?

 

[Phishfarmer]

I can cut down a "limited" amount of the saplings. They are tiny... maybe 3/4" in diameter.

 

[vferrari]

At these depths you are unlikely to get reliable VDI's and since you are basically digging everything that gives you a signal I would go with tones = pitch and base the custom program off the Deus Fast built in program because that basically turns of the silencer (giving you maximum depth capability). I would go with lower frequency as you planned 13 to 14 khz even with the HF coil and go with iron discriminated up to 10 and iron volume on 3 so you can still "hear" the iron as low grunts so you can tell whether the pitch tone you are getting has both a ferrous and non-ferrous component indicating that it is really just ferrous falsing. When using pitch tones look for any slight changes in pitch I would also use the identical program but with frequency at 28 khz so you can quickly bounce any hits off that frequency to see if the signal gets stronger or weaker indicating high conductive minie (if it gets weaker) or mid-conductive (e.g., button or small lead) if it gets stronger. Also experiment with Gold Field. You can set a threshold with Gold Field and use programs with the same two frequencies set reactivity to 2.5 or 3. It is counterintuitive but the higher reactivity makes Gold Field more effective. Gold field also lets you put in some iron rejection (called IAR). Depending on how much you apply, it will cause ferrous signals to break up more than non-ferrous. The only caveat is that in highly mineralized soil, almost all targets look like they have a ferrous component so IAR will even break up non-ferrous signals. You can duplicate the "pitch" program with a more traditional five-tones program by simply changing tones to 5 tones, vice pitch and try that out as an alternative to pitch, again at the two lower HF coil frequencies. Do a test with a several minies buried at different depths and get used to what they will sound like.

 

[Phishfarmer]

The soil here in Petersburg is not highly mineralized. Grey gloppy clay that one could throw a pot with and the odd band of sand. The Gold Field program is the only one I have not experimented with but it sounds promising. I was thinking a threshold would be advantageous. I went to the site again today and was more successful; found about 20 minnies and some misc. artillery pcs.

thanks for the suggestions!