Short Hunt to Start off April....

[CZconnoisseur]

We finally had a decent day where the snow wasn't blowing, settled, or otherwise blocking the way to get to a good local spot where older coins seem to congregate! I hunted this park on Monday and found a couple of older Wheats and a nice Type 1 Buffalo nickel, and for the last couple days I've been jonesing to get back out there!

Today I picked up in the same 50-foot box where I keep getting faint targets...many of them turn out to be keepers! I ran Disc = 0 today to see if it helped with any of the foil - didn't see any difference in performance one way or another. First target sounded good and indicated 89-91 VDI un 4khz - at the 7" mark out came a 1934D Wheat...a little newer than usual but still on the right track - that just proved that I didn't have the coil over that spot before!

Went on for a while and dug some foil at various places, then finally got over a sweet-sounding "86" that sounded like a deep silver quarter! I got excited but that quickly waned when it turned out to be a pulltab at 5"....re-ground balanced and not 2 feet away I got a faint high-toned hit. Looking at the "horseshoe", it indicated non-ferrous (right side) about 1/3 of it was shaded. In my experience, this indicates a coin-sized (dime or penny sized) target at about 6". At about 7" down out came a pretty sharp 1893 Indian that cleaned up rather well.

Running Disc = 0 didn't seem to affect the operation of the "horseshoe", even for the deeper, tougher targets. Every time I got one of those soft, rolling hits the horseshoe indicated "non-ferrous" - the 1902 Barber Dime was at 8" and it indicated about 1/6 shaded right side. Didn't dig ANY IRON today, but when I want to go after those 10" coins and beyond, I'm sure more will show itself. For now I'm going to leave Disc = 0 - I don't see anything adverse from running it like this, and when I changed over to an adjacent 8 kHz program (zero Notch, zero Disc) there was no difference in the horseshoe operation that I could tell.

Deepest coin of the day was found right at the end of the hunt, maybe 15 feet from the Barber dime - a 1912 Wheat. I didn't check the target in other programs since it was getting dark - once I saw it was a Wheat I headed for the car - lunch was a long time ago and I was famished!

Will be getting back there Monday - the weather is supposed to warm up and be ideal for getting at those deep ones!

 

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[vferrari]

Good to know re: the horseshoe functionality at 0 Disc. I was always told that at 0 Disc the ferrous/non-ferrous functionality would be lost.

Regarding running at 4Khz, the only limitations I am aware of are that TX power is fixed at 3 and there is no frequency offset function. That appears to only be a disadvantage with highly mineralized ground or if you are getting interference at 4khz (perhaps from another Deus user).

BTW - Nice finds!

 

[CZconnoisseur]

Good to know re: the horseshoe functionality at 0 Disc. I was always told that at 0 Disc the ferrous/non-ferrous functionality would be lost.

Regarding running at 4Khz, the only limitations I am aware of are that TX power is fixed at 3 and there is no frequency offset function. That appears to only be a disadvantage with highly mineralized ground or if you are getting interference at 4khz (perhaps from another Deus user).

BTW - Nice finds!

"I'm Owen...."

4kHz is somewhat prone to EMI but the main reason I like it is for the iron rejection. This park happens to have soil only slightly mineralized, but other areas around here can be highly mineralized and very tough. Usually you know on the first target - if you're struggling to dig a 2" plug for a target you can bet the mineralization is going to be a big problem...I haven't really ventured out of the area but I would like to try Pikes Peak itself - there has been the infamous hill climb there for almost 100 years and there's only a few places that spectators can set up camp....needs to warm up a little more for that since it's mostly at 10,000ft elevation and higher

 

[vferrari]

Yes, with highly mineralized ground, it is helpful to reduce transmit power below 3 (the "high beams in the fog" analogy), so 4 khz keeps you from being able to do that. I do some CW relic hunting in central VA and the "Red Dut" is murder. I find that Gold Field (running at any freq and in GB tracking mode) is a nice to have complimentary custom program situated next to my more traditional 8 and 12 KHZ custom relic programs with 8 Disc and Low Iron Volume and no notch (except IRON wraparound NOTCH at 97-99 VDI) so I can easily switch back and forth using the +/- buttons. I don't have a 4khz Relic program preprogrammed (though it is easy to change frequencies on the fly with the Deus) because I am usually running TX power at 2 in the highly mineralized soil. Need to do some experimentation on using ground notch to null out "hot" rocks, as my next tweak. Went out yesterday to the relic hunt area and the Deus delivered with three different CW bullet types recovered in a plowed field with hot rocks, mineralization, can slaw, and plenty of farm iron (I found that giant tractor bolt you lost...)

Yeah, I probably need a portable O2 tank to make it up Pike's lol! Is Pikes Peak privately or state run such that you can detect there?

"I hope this isn't him"

 

[toasted]

I dont understand the iron wrap around notch. I dug a deep SLQ yesterday that was at 96-97 on the VDI.

 

[vferrari]

Iron will wrap around at high VDI numbers in some cases, that is a fact. The VDI will still display, you just won't hear it if you invoke the notch there. Like practically everything, in MDing, it is a judgement call (by you) as to whether you want to invoke it. Andy Sabisch, who wrote the most detailed guidebook and teaches bootcamp classes on the Deus, recommends the notch under almost all hunting circumstances since most targets that ring up at 97 or above are most likely iron. But but just as with your quarter example, there are no absolutes, and a number of folks, me included, can point out examples of where a keeper rings up in that range, and so YMMV applies. On the flip side, I find iron in fields rings up in the low numbers but also wraps around into the high and usually unstable. That's when I know it is likely iron in that range. On deeper targets or targets that are not coin shaped, the Deus VDI may not read out correctly in terms of number and depth and may not even display on very deep targets. The point is that for the Deus, reliance on the VDI alone is not the best course since it is a sound machine, it is a matter of listening to what the tones are saying, looking at the vdi and horseshoe stability and then making a decision to dig based on putting all that together. Also, I don't just rely on discrimination type programs and compliment them with the GF All Metal program (with no notch or discrimination) when making a decision to dig a particular target. Regarding the notch, it is a personal choice based on what works best for you and your situation. Since the Deus is a primarily a tone machine, there is a school of thought that nothing should be notched (or even discriminated), so that argues against the wraparound notch. The wraparound notch is what I do, so I put it out there for consideration by others.