I recently searched a site I knew had been hit hard and often, but I still managed to winkle a few good finds out of the area.
Most of the good finds came out of holes with at least one piece of iron in the same hole.
No matter what non ferrous targets you are searching for, if there is iron resting close to good targets you will struggle to detect the good target because of the iron.
On this occasion I heard the mixed signals from multiple targets and relied on my ears.
VDI screens on metal detectors are not much help if you haven’t had experience interpreting multiple targets under your search coil.
The most eye opening test you can do a VLF ( Very low frequency) metal detector is the iron nail test.
For this simple test to see how iron masking works, place a gold ring or silver coin on the ground next to an iron nail.
Sweep your search coil over the top of the test targets and see how far away from the iron nail the gold ring or silver coin has to be placed before you can detect the good target.
Experiment with different size nails and you will see just how easy it is for a person to mistakenly believe an area is cleaned out.
The sweeping direction across the test targets and the size of the nail come into play, also the size of the search coil and how fast it is swept.
Put all those factors together and you can see why a search area considered “ Hunted out” is never really hunted out if you know how iron masking works.
You just have to work harder and smarter to detect targets and rely on your ears to winkle out good finds waiting to be detected.
Check out any metal detecting forum and the number one question asked today is what numbers?
In reality a better question is what signal,tone or pitch as these are the things that are important when you have multiple ferrous and non ferrous targets under your search coil.
Eyes on the ground ears at attention, just because a site is heavily hunted or referred to as “Cleaned out” it does not mean you cannot winkle out a good find or two.
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