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Monday, June 29, 2015

Going the extra yard

Yesterday I got a chance to go metal detecting at a popular tourist beach in Palm Beach county Florida. 
This place is hit hard by many beach and water hunters, yesterday I saw several people already metal detecting when I arrived. 
The skies were getting darker and I knew I was probably going to have to leave the beach when a thunder storm rolled onshore. 
My strategy was to search an area at the tourist beach that is hunted the least, an obvious turn around area. 
Often beach and water hunters use the same turn around markers at tourist beaches, lifeguard towers, fishing piers or just the end of a line of sun beds laid out on the beach. 
What is the point of going past the crowded area, right? 
After entering the water with my Minelab Excalibur,  just a few yards past one of those obvious turn around points I started to recover coins and jewelry. 
I found a silver ring in the first 10 minutes which is always a good sign. A heavy platinum ring was recovered not far away from the silver ring and before leaving I recovered an 18K gold ring. 
All the coins in the area, also told me that other beach and water hunters did not like to detect very far past the crowded area at this beach. 
My platinum and gold rings were not found because I was following other people using inferior equipment or metal detecting techniques, just bad search patterns. 
Not all pople using the beach like to be in crowded areas at the beach, some people like to relax away from crowded sections of the beach. 
They lose jewelry and that jewelry stays in the area until an enterprising beach or water hunter goes the extra yard with their metal detector. 
When you have competition at the beach for jewelry and coins, you have to sometimes search or cover areas you probably would prefer not to.
Sometimes other hunters in the area squeeze you into searching an area you would rather not be at. In my case yesterday, two people were already searching the area I would have chosen to search first. 
Searching the less crowded section of a tourist beach might not seem like a good idea, but they are often the less heavily searched areas at tourist beaches with obvious turn around points or empty spaces between busier stretches of the beach. 


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