It was a fun weekend with a great group of people well away from my usual coastline treasure hunts.
When you step outside your regular metal detecting world you often learn a thing or two about your treasure hunting equipment and search techniques and how they fit with the new situation you find yourself dealing with.
One of the reasons I like searching a wide variety of sites for different things is because you can learn new things no matter how experienced you think you are.
Unfortunately for me the first thing I learned was to pack a small search coil when traveling to an unfamiliar metal detecting site, boy did I get bogged down in trash infested areas using a large search coil.
Bad packing and pre travel decision on my part as I usually never travel without a small sniper coil just in case of the situation I found myself in.
An unforeseen change of search sites threw a proverbial relic hunting wrench in my well thought out ground coverage and target depth over target separation plan.
Instead of using two different large search coils to detect deeply buried civil war artifacts in the woods, I used the same large search coils over trash infested fields next to old home sites.
Im fond of saying to find the treasure you have to dig thru the trash but this was cray cray.
I recovered a few good finds but it was very hard work dealing with large amounts of iron and junk non ferrous targets, both iron and target masking lead to good stuff not being heard above the threshold chatter at very trashy sites.
Another thing I learned was a new found respect for VDI target readouts as digging it all is not the best option in real trashy areas, in certain situations target conductivity and ferrous property readouts save you valuable search and digging time.
Above all this trip just cemented what I have put in almost every treasure hunting related book I have written, you have to be prepared and ready for any metal detecting situation.
Another advantage to small search coils is they are easier to sweep in-between bushes and tree roots, notoriously difficult to detect places because a large search coil cannot get to them.
If you haven't got a small search coil in your metal detecting arsenal I suggest you pick one up because they can really make a difference on trashy sites.
Here are a couple of my favorite small search coils for winkling out good stuff at trashy sites, the Coiltek 10 x 5 elliptical for the Minelab CTX 3030 and Minelab 6 inch for the Equinox 800
You never know when you are going to run across a situation where target separation over target depth is the way to fill your finds pouch with goodies.
To find the treasure you often have to go thru the trash as the best finds are often hidden in plain sight and you have to winkle them out.
Another advantage to small search coils is they are easier to sweep in-between bushes and tree roots, notoriously difficult to detect places because a large search coil cannot get to them.
If you haven't got a small search coil in your metal detecting arsenal I suggest you pick one up because they can really make a difference on trashy sites.
Here are a couple of my favorite small search coils for winkling out good stuff at trashy sites, the Coiltek 10 x 5 elliptical for the Minelab CTX 3030 and Minelab 6 inch for the Equinox 800
You never know when you are going to run across a situation where target separation over target depth is the way to fill your finds pouch with goodies.
To find the treasure you often have to go thru the trash as the best finds are often hidden in plain sight and you have to winkle them out.
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