Walking or scooping?

I metal detect at some of the most heavily hunted beaches in the world, the tourist beaches of Florida.
The beach and water at many tourist beaches in Florida are searched night and day by a small army of full time treasure hunters.
On Sunday morning I arrived at a tourist beach with six other people already metal detecting at the beach.
Two water hunters, one wet sander and three dry sanders, the water looked the most promising area so I decided to follow the water hunters.
One guy was searching in chest deep water, the other was wading along a straight line in the shallows.
I chose to follow the guy in the deeper water, who was searching along a straight line on the edge of the sand bar.
An east west direction search pattern allowed me to cover more of the slope on the sand bar, than the straight line water hunter I was following.
I was surprised by the amount of targets I was recovering, many targets were higher up on the slope of the sand bar.
Not surprisingly the other water hunters faded into the distance as I got stuck into scooping and recovering targets.
These five pieces of gold made their way into my finds pouch, recovered from the spot the competition could not wait to get away from.

I guess you can get lucky on a tourist beach searching long distances in one straight line, but I would rather put all my efforts into a more concentrated search.
The longer I have been beach and water hunting, the less I travel around at the beach.  
I look at my short concentrated power hunting style as making the most of my beach or water hunting time.
A bit like traveling long distances to detect, why spend hours behind the wheel traveling to a beach many miles away, when you can spend all your time metal detecting at a local beach.
Far too many beach and water hunters look like they are in a hurry to head somewhere else.
Some of my local beaches resemble a scene from the Benny Hill show, as several beach or water hunters race around trying to cover the best areas before the competition.
Anytime you start scooping targets, the last thing you want to do is walk away from a target rich spot at a tourist beach.
Expand the search area and pound the heck out of the site,  every scoop you make is one step closer to recovering gold.
You will find more gold with your scoop than your boots!