Does your metal detector or search coil pass the lower beach test?

The lower beach close to the water is a good proving ground for metal detectors and search coils. 

If you are serious about being a beach or water hunter, your equipment has to be up to the challenge.

Metal detector or search coil, if it does not pass my three basic tests on the lower beach it is not going to become part of my beach or shallow water hunting arsenal. 

I say shallow water hunting because you can get away with a non waterproof metal detector if you are very careful, and I mean very careful! 

I often try new metal detecting equipment, it's just another way of staying ahead of the competition. 

It makes good treasure hunting sense not to get left behind using outdated treasure hunting equipment or techniques. 

Sometimes I discover something that gives me an edge over the competition, other times it goes pear shaped. 

The main thing is I saw for myself, and if a metal detector or search coil did not live up to expectations it is usually because it failed to perform well on the lower beach proving ground.

Wet to dry sand transition 

Going from the dry sand to the wet sand is the first real test of a metal detector or search coil you hope to use for beach hunting. 

You can use the most expensive metal detector or search coil, but if you cannot make out good signals from false signals in the wet sand, what is the point of using it.

Noisy chattery metal detectors  cause you to miss valuable targets on the lower beach. Putting you at a disadvantage over other beach hunters using equipment that can handle searching over wet freshwater or saltwater sand.

Seaweed 

If your metal detector or new search coil emits a false signal every time you sweep over wet seaweed, you run the risk of  missing valuable targets. 

High tide lines are often littered with seaweed, high tide lines are great places to find jewelry and coins washed up along with the seaweed. 

I have a little more wiggle room for using equipment that gives the occasional false signal over soaking seaweed, but within reason.

Seaweed holds saltwater and takes longer to dry than the surrounding high tide sand, causing havoc with many metal detectors or search coils. 

Rushing water over the search coil 

If your metal detector or search coil goes nuts every time water rushes over your search coil on the lower beach, you again run the risk of not detecting valuable targets. False signals are caused by either the water bumping your coil or the extra amount of salt rushing over the top of your coil at saltwater beaches. 

Either way it can be very frustrating using a chattery metal detector in the surf zone. 

If your metal detector or search coil is effected by more than one of these three lower beach situations, you may be in for some frustrating times on the lower beach. 

Experienced beach hunters may be able to diffuse difficult lower beach hunting situations by tweaking your metal detector controls and using different search techniques. 

Although experience has taught me, it is always better to use the right tools for the job. 

I use equipment that helps me to detect fine gold jewelry, like this emerald wrapped in 22k gold wire. 

The emerald pendant was found in choppy surf back in 2013, obviously not much of a metal target to detect, but not having to deal with a chattery detector or false signals means you do not miss jewelry like this. 

Traveling to detect tips

I have been on several trips abroad this year and because I am a hardcore treasure hunter, I took my detecting gear with me. 

A couple of months ago my email inbox was full of questions from people who were traveling to Florida to detect after a major hurricane moved along the coastline of Florida.

So here's a few thoughts about traveling to detect and what to take along for the journey.

Your favorite metal detector

Always take the metal detector you are most comfortable using, traveling to a place you have not searched is not the time to use a back up or situational metal detector. 

For example if you use a VLF metal detector, leave the PI detector at home and maybe vice versa depending what metal detector you use the majority of the time. 

Nothing beats being comfortable and at ease, instead of wishing you had brought your old faithful metal detector with you. 

Search coil selection 

I take the stock coil and an extra larger search coil than I would normally use when traveling to detect. 

Knowing from experience that both of these sizes suit the majority of metal detecting situations I am likely to encounter.

Better to plan big than go small and worry about ground coverage and target depth.

Accessories 

I prefer to take a metal detecting sling or harness when I expect to spend more time than normal metal detecting. 

Spare battery packs are important and so too is a pin-pointer and finds pouch. 

A Travel scoop for beach hunters or a fold up spade for land hunters makes sense, or you can buy a digging tool locally after you arrive.

Two simple and often overlooked things can ruin a trip you have a chance to metal detect on, a broken search coil bolt or arm cuff strap.

Good look trying to find both of these items locally abroad, I carry both of these items in my vehicle whenever I go metal detecting. 

Lastly don't forget to travel light and layered. You get what you pay for when it comes to outdoor clothing. 
A cheap rain suit after five minutes in the woods, will make you look like you had a run in with a grizzly bear. 

When I know I am likely going to be water hunting, I take a light wet suit, hard soled dive boots and gloves. 

Here's a short video of a recent land hunt in England and a small medieval hammered silver coin I pulled up using one of my favorite travel accessories. 

https://youtu.be/5ijioo7WSu8

Discrimination by use of a metal detector target depth indicator

I had a chance to do a little metal detecting on a recent overseas business trip and I relied heavily on my metal detector target depth read out while searching for old coins and artifacts.

It is amazing how many pesky bottle caps and pull tabs you find in off the beaten track sites. 

Often out of the way places you would least expect to recover the same modern junk I find on Florida beaches.

If the situation calls for it, I will discriminate by target depth when searching for modern gold jewelry at tourist type beaches, especially during heavily sanded-in beach and water hunting conditions.

Discriminating by target depth is probably a technique more known to people who search for old coins in trashy inland parks than to beach hunters. 

The basic premise is that you can avoid digging shallow junk targets by only stopping to dig targets with deep target depth readings. 

Old coins are not usually going to be shallow targets in a park, a trained ear can easily help pick out the tone of a silver coin in areas with large numbers of shallower modern coins.

At a sanded in tourist type beach, gold is found at deeper depths than common beach found clad coins. 

Gold being denser or heavier, sinks into fluffy loose sand much faster and deeper than clad coins. 

This helps explain why many beach hunters return home with lightweight junk targets during sanded in conditions, instead of gold.

I'm not much into returning home with chump change, which is why I often like to use a metal detector with a screen and target depth indicator at tourist beaches. 

I prefer to leave the junk and get the gold before the competition. 
Yes I know it's beach hunting heresy, but in my opinion you do not have to dig it all to have a successful beach hunt.

When you know gold is highly likely to be detected deeper than clad coins and pull tabs, don't dig any target registering near the surface, unless of course it sounds like gold. 

The time you waste digging obvious non gold targets eventually starts to eat into your precious beach hunting time.  
The more obvious surface junk you waste time digging, the further you will find yourself away from recovering gold as you run out of metal detecting time.

Back to my recent couple of short hunts during my recent trip, I used six inches as the likely modern finds cut off target depth. 

Every older coin or artifact I recovered had a target depth reading of nine to twelve inches, well beyond the modern finds cut off depth.

The next time you know you are digging shallow junk during sanded in tourist beach conditions, use that experience of yours to resist the temptation to stop and dig surface junk. 

Check out your target depth display and move a step closer to recovering gold. 

This is just an " Outside the box" technique that helps you adapt to a specific situation. 

Versatility

In these days of increased beach and water hunting competition, using versatile metal detecting equipment can be a big advantage. 

Surprisingly, you do not often hear or see the word versatility used in connection to beach or water hunting.

During a metal detecting lesson last weekend, I told my client not to worry about two beach hunters who showed up to search the same place we were searching. 

I believe I said, don't worry they are not competition because of the metal detectors they are using.

For good reason, as their single frequency VLF metal detectors would have ruled water hunting and searching the wet sand close to the water. 
It would have been really difficult to detect targets even after dumbing down the type of single frequency metal detector they had in the sand. 

I prefer to use multi frequency VLF metal detectors that can handle a variety of conditions and allow me to change search coils to a variety of different beach or water hunting situations. 

When you cannot search an area of the beach because of your metal detector or your search coil is not suited to search the area, you can be sure someone else can! 

Using versatile equipment also applies to beach hunting recovery tools, you could be using a scoop that is holding you back by increasing the amount of time you spend recovering targets.
It may also be wearing you down if the scoop is not very ergonomic. 

Choose a versatile scoop you can use on the beach or in the water, to compliment a versatile metal detector. 

The longer you spend beach or water hunting, the more you realize versatile metal detecting equipment will work for you, not against you. 
This is another example of a certain amount of beach hunting competition maybe not being real competition to you.
Just because you see a lot of people metal detecting at the beach, it does not mean you cannot find anything. 

Planning for a successful jewelry hunt

So much of beach jewelry hunting is about planning and having the right search strategy, knowing before you go to you give yourself the best shot at recovering jewelry.

Although I only had a four hour jewelry hunt this weekend, I made sure the jewelry hunting scales were tipped in my favor by planning ahead of the trip to the beach.
The three following things were the main reasons I went over the 20 ounce gold jewelry mark for 2016, working on a hunch using the right search techniques and equipment for the task.

1. Recon 

The beach I chose to search, was spotted the previous week and looked promising. 

I actually spent the last fifteen minutes of a previous jewelry hunt testing the area.
The high amount of quarters and nickels in the area told me the place had not been searched for a while, so I eagerly awaited returning to the site.
I had a back up site ready, but it was not needed as this site was still ready for cherry picking.
Recon and trying a site on a hunch often works if you can break the habit of going to the same jewelry hunting sites every week. 

2. Search strategy 

If the site was still loaded with clad coins, I planned to cherry pick the low and really high tones with one of my favorite VLF metal detectors. 

By having a selective target recovery plan, I could cover the area trying to pick out the obvious gold or silver targets.
Instead of wasting time digging clad coins and junk targets, I intended to use my experience to go for gold.

Sure, I could miss a good target being masked by a larger target, but hey I found four gold and seven pieces of silver jewelry. 
I prefer to go for what I can detect in my allotted metal detecting time, and not worry about what I may be leaving behind. 

I only had four hours to hunt this weekend so I maximized my jewelry hunting time to try bring home my share of jewelry, which turned out to be three gold rings, one platinum and 18K band, three silver rings and two silver bracelets. 

3. Horses for courses 

Using a metal detector with good audio responses to the stuff you are searching for makes perfect jewelry hunting sense.

The majority of gold jewelry responds with a low tone on my Minelab CTX 3030, silver has a high tone, the same tones I am used to on my Minelab Excalibur and Sovereign.  
After years of using my favorite metal detectors I can hear the differences between common beach found clad coins and gold or silver rings, heck I can even tell the difference between an aluminum pull tab and a gold ring.
In horse racing lingo, I choose the horse for the course by using the equipment that is going to detect the stuff I am searching for.

Here is a link to a video, explaining the way I set up one of the metal detectors I use for "Cherry picking" gold and silver jewelry at the beach. 

https://youtu.be/toPi4OgnUwk

Weekend warrior jewelry hunting tips

I continue to find gold at heavily hunted Florida tourist beaches, even though my beach hunting time has been limited to only searching over weekends this year. 

The next piece of gold I recover will push me past the 20 ounces of gold jewelry mark for 2016.

So here are three weekend warrior tips I will share that hopefully will put more jewelry in your finds pouch.

1. Weekend warrior tip number one is to play the beach or water hunting percentages. Search where the gold and silver is, not where every other beach or water hunter is. 

If you automatically run to the where everyone else searches on a Saturday morning, divide the number of searchers by the amount of jewelry you think was probably lost in that area over the previous week. 
That will probably be your share of any loot in the area, so do you still think it's a good idea to join the detecting crowd ? 

2.  Go for the easy stuff, don't worry about what you may be missing. 

The wiser you use your allotted beach or water hunting time, the better. 

Avoid digging everything just in case you miss one piece of jewelry.  
Many beach and water hunters blame a lack of finds on beach conditions or their choice of metal detector, but often they are just not getting to the jewelry before others. 

Time wasted sloppily trying to cover too much of the beach, or digging junk targets are often the main reasons for a lack of recovered jewelry. 

3. Know your depositors, where they use and lose at the beach. 
I pride myself on my people reading skills, knowing where I am likely to recover lost jewelry at the beach. 

If you doing the same thing at the same site all the time you are selling yourself short, unless you know why your doing it.

Try going to the beach and sitting down watching people before you turn your metal detector on. 

You will be amazed how much jewelry hunting information you can gather just by watching people using the beaches you like to search.

Check out where parents are playing with young kids, where the old folks are chatting or where the centers of main activity are.

After watching people at the beach, it sure makes you wonder why so many beach and water hunters are set in their ways. 

When you step out the beach and water hunting box, you can even have success at the most heavily hunted beaches. 

This was a water hunting sight from last weekend, good luck my fellow weekend warriors ! 

https://youtu.be/8AziY_SLDng

Full moon beach and water hunting

One of the best times for beach or water hunting is during low tide on a full moon. 

You will have more lower beach to search and you will be able to search areas in the water that are normally out of reach. 

I look for two things during the full moon, rocky areas exposed on the lower beach and deep areas further out in the water containing a high amount of coins. 

Rocky areas can be difficult to search and recover targets from when they are inside the water, a full moon low tide often exposes rocky areas making them more workable.

I've talked about collection areas, deep pockets of water where coins and jewelry are washed into, when you can get to these type of areas during a full moon low tide you can clean up.

This weekend I was able to get to an offshore area thanks to the super moon low tide and I recovered gold and silver jewelry.

Here is a video of one of those finds, a large silver chain and cross 
https://youtu.be/TQpl8cLkmTc

There were many rocks, shells and clumps of coral in the deep offshore pocket of water, which is always a good sign for a jewelry hunter.

It is not just full moon low tides that are helpful, the high tides can also help fill your finds pouch.

Higher than normal high tides push jewelry and coins way up onto the beach, on narrow beaches that can lead to beach erosion.

In my beach and water hunting books I always stress the importance of not tying yourself to searching one area of the beach. 

For example, just searching along the wet sand, or on the dry sand or only water hunting.
Full moon tides open up a variety of opportunities to beach and water hunters, so it helps if you do not short change yourself by thinking jewelry or coins can only be found in one area at the beach.

On this occasion an offshore pocket of normally inaccessible deeper water yielded gold but it could just have easily been a different full moon opportunity. 

The beach is constantly changing, during the full moon phase the beach bank is open for longer business hours!