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Thursday, January 8, 2015

Tight search patterns

I never try to cover large areas when beach or water hunting and I always use a tight search pattern.
From experience, I have found the less ground I try to cover, the more jewelry and coins I always recover. 
The morning I found this heavy 18K gold coin ring with 40 diamonds, I actually stood in place for 5 minutes waiting for a swimmer to pass so I could keep a straight line through the water. 

As I continued along the straight line I detected the gold coin ring, if I had strayed from my straight line I could have easily missed this ring. 
The funny thing about this story is I remember having to stay composed as I saw the ring in the bottom of my scoop basket.
Gold ring, gold coin and diamonds was the perfect trifecta, but it was better not to draw attention to myself by flashing the ring around.
Another person was metal detecting in the area and I did not want the gold coin ring giving the other person metal detecting an excuse to return to the site. 
Anyone who has read my beach and water hunting books, has probably read the phrase "It is not how much ground you cover, it is how you cover the ground" 
Beach and water hunting is often a game of inches, a few inches to the left or right could be all that separates you from your find of a lifetime. 
That is the reason why I pick an area of the beach to search, then hammer the heck out of that area. 
I slowly overlap my search coil sweeps, which helps me to cover the surface area and just as many inches in depth. 
Drag your scoop, follow your footprints, use visible markers on the beach as turn around points, anything to help you keep tight search patterns.
This heavy gold coin ring was deep, it was found because I kept a tight search pattern and used an ultra slow sweep speed on my Excalibur. 
Methodical beach and water hunters find more jewelry and coins, than beach and water hunters hoping to find jewelry and coins by covering the whole beach. 

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