A way to search the fluffy stuff

I learned how to use a metal detector in England, shortly after finding a 1790 gold coin while digging for old bottles and clay pipes.

The sight of that gold coin against the black Lincolnshire mud was more than enough to make me change hobbies.

After using my Minelab Sovereign over plowed and dragged fields, I learned how important it was to follow the contours of the land with a search coil.

Many metal detectors do not do very well over fluffy airy surfaces, my Sovereign was no exception. 

Changing to a smaller search coil made life easier, especially as many of the targets I detected were relatively shallow targets trapped in the folds of earth left behind by the tractor. 

Instead of using a large search coil and moving across the top of the worked land hoping for the best, I was able to hug the dips and folds in the land using a smaller search coil and detect more targets.

I added this method of covering worked land to my beach and water hunting techniques,  searching on the beach and in the water close to shore in sanded in areas. 

Beach and water hunters who only use the same size large search coil are at a disadvantage over fluffy or mushy sand, if the area is hilly or deeply rippled.

Moving a 10, 11, 12 inch or bigger search coil over the top of fluffy hilly sand only puts your search coil further away from targets.

Going with a smaller search coil will give you a chance of locking onto shallow targets on the bottom and sides of slopes in sanded in areas.

I have been having a lot of success jewelry hunting lately in sanded in conditions, using a smaller CTX 3030 search coil and the SDC 2300 with an 8 inch search coil.

Some of the platinum, gold and silver jewelry I found in August were deep targets, others were just difficult to detect because of the hilly sanded in terrain. 

Like I have said before, when you are faced with sanded in conditions, you still have a chance of finding something if you change your metal detecting equipment,  beach and water hunting tactics, or both.

If you look closely you can see the hilly surface inside the shallow water, my SDC 2300 8 inch coil was able to hug the bottom of the valleys and score several pieces of gold jewelry. 

Gold that may have been missed if I had used a larger search coil over the top of the heavily rippled sand.