What are you in it for?

It would be nice to find out what readers of this blog are into metal detecting for, no matter how much expensive modern jewelry I recover I prefer finding old stuff.
Sometimes you get the best of both worlds, returning home with an old piece of gold with precious stones.
I have had more than my fair share of old jewelry, found on the beach and inside the water using a wide variety of metal detectors.
Old jewelry is hard to find at the beach, but it can be found if you are a slow methodical beach hunter.
At least two or three times a year in south Florida I run across a hot spot containing several pieces of old jewelry.
I am talking about areas where I recover multiple gold class or college rings, due to favorable tides or some type of beach erosion.
Although old gold class rings are not exactly old compared to gold rings recovered in other parts of the world they can still be quite impressive when found in numbers.
Last year I recovered nine gold class rings over two three hour water hunts at an eroded section of beach.
Before the ring returners blow a gasket, I did manage to make contact with three people who lost their rings and were very happy to see them again, even encrusted in green coral lol
The other gold rings were impossible to return, with no owners initials from the 1940s and 1950s from schools that are now long gone.
I dont make a big deal about returning rings, iphones, or wallets found at the beach, I look at the returns as good Karma to appease the beach and water hunting gods.
I also like finding old coins at the beach, it still amazes me some of the old coins that can be recovered at tourist beaches or beaches in the middle of nowhere. 
Which goes back to what I always say, the more sites you search, the more variety of things you will recover, including old jewelry and coins if they are there. 
Heres a few older finds from florida beaches, some from places I expected to go home empty handed from. 

Jewelry hunting

I always find it hard to add the word coins when people ask me what I am searching for at the beach, as jewelry is what I am really searching for when I am on a tourist type beach using a metal detector.
Although for every piece of jewelry you find I would say on average you find fifty or perhaps a hundred coins. 
When I post jewelry I have recovered at the beach, I rarely show the hard work I put in to find the jewelry I recovered, which would be a large amount of coins of all denominations.
The reason I do not post coins is because they could give away the site I found the jewelry.
I know my local beaches like the back of my hand, I also know what coins look like when they come off one of the local beaches I search. 
Foreign coins are recovered in quantities in certain areas, so when I lurk on detecting forums and see local hunters posting photos of foreign coins I know exactly where they are hunting. 
Shiny fresh dropped coins are often found opposite beach parking lots, especially quarters.
Black or dark grey coins are silver and have spent time in saltwater, the tarnish is oxidization from spending an extended time in saltwater. 
Green encrusted coins usually come out of the wet sand or the slope leading into the water.
Black and green encrusted coins I would not dream of posting, just in case I am still working the site.
You probably get the point of todays post, you can tell a lot about a jewelry hunting site by the coins you find.
Heck you could say I go to the beach to search for coins, because if you are finding coins there is a really good chance jewelry can also be found in the same area.
Jewelry and coin hunting go hand in hand, although coins are easier to find than jewelry for a couple of reasons.
The first reason being people take more coins than jewelry to the beach, obviously you are going to recover more coins than jewelry.
The second reason jewelry is harder to find than coins is target masking, the damn coins mask the good stuff at tourist type beaches.
A half ounce 10 K gold class ring will be invisible sitting next to a couple of pennies, you may even dig the pennies mistake the chunky gold ring for another penny and decide to move on.
No doubt this happens a lot at heavily hunted sites when the most important thing is to cover the prime ground before the competition, yeh right? 
Not me, I pick an area I believe is promising and let the coins lead me to gold. 

Are you detecting deep enough at the beach?

In my opinion, the hardest targets to detect at the beach are often shallow targets, but the majority of beach and water hunters obsess over target depth. 
If you mistakenly believe you cannot find anything at the beach because the good stuff must be deeper, the latest greatest deepest metal detector or search coil is not going to help you.
This $5K diamond engagement ring was recovered in the dry sand approximately three or four inches deep, so were the Spanish silver treasure coin in the next photo.

Search techniques, beach reading skills and site selection, are far more important than target depth for a beach or water hunter.
Heck I believe I could probably find more jewelry using a garden leaf rake at the beach than someone using a deep seeking 10K metal detector and a 20 inch search coil.
The silver treasure coins in this photo were lost over three hundred years ago, but ended up close to the surface and easily detected on a Treasure Coast beach.

I know they were recovered due to site selection and knowing when to go look for them, you could say I waited for Spanish treasure to come to me. 
The diamond engagement ring was recovered very close to several pieces of surface junk at a tourist beaches, bottle caps and corroding pennies that work like a Klingon cloaking device to mask jewelry.
My goal at many tourist type beaches is to recover shallow hard to detect pieces of jewelry left behind by speedy beach hunters.
When I walk onto a beach I aim to find and recover anything of value within the normal detection range of the equipment I am using. 
I am not concerned about what may lie much deeper, as the majority of the gold, platinum and silver jewelry I detect at the beach is recovered within the first six inches of sand.
Depth is very over rated and often used as the excuse to why a person cannot find jewelry at the beach.
Improving your search techniques, beach reading skills and site selection will help you avoid falling into the trap of believing everything good is just out of reach at the beach.
It only takes a little trash to cloak or mask a lot of of treasure! 

Search coils and settings

I am a search coil junkie, which can be a little tough on the old wallet as some search coils cost as much as a metal detector now.
One important thing to remember when changing search coils on your metal detector is you have to adjust your settings to suit whatever search coil you have installed on your metal detector.
You have to make sure you use the right metal detector settings for the size search coil being used.
For example, you should not be concerned about discrimination or settings geared towards recover speed or target separation when using a large search coil.
Large search coils are always best used for ground coverage and target depth at non trashy beach sites.
The opposite is true when using small search coils at trashy beach sites, where target separation not target depth is the most important factor. 
You can run much hotter manual sensitivity settings using smaller search coils than you can using large search coils.
The reason why there is not a lot of difference in target depth between the 8 and 10-inch search coils on one of my favorite metal detectors the Minelab Excalibur.
Hot or high sensitivity levels will result in a noisy ride at the beach, so you often have to lower the metal detector sensitivity control to operate smoothly.
A chattery metal detector because of an incorrect sensitivity setting for the size of search coil, may cause you to walk over valuable targets missed in the threshold chatter.
If you dumb down your metal detector to use a large search coil, any potential target depth advantage of using the large search coil is wiped out. 
It is not just settings you have to adjust, a fast sweep speed will also negate any depth advantage of using the large search coil.
You have to sweep large search coils slower than small search coils.
If you are using different size search coils on a regular basis, more than likely you know how and why they serve a purpose in your beach or water hunting arsenal.
Unfortunately, people new to beach or water hunting use different size search coils but do not understand their "Normal" settings do not always do a different size search coil justice.
To get the maximum benefit from investing in a different size search coil for a metal detector, you have to find the best settings to run the new combination at.
Different set ups require different settings to make the reason you are using it work. 

Beach & water hunting troubles

Many moons ago I managed to run across a trifecta of bad beach and water hunting situations, all thanks to an early predawn hunt at a local tourist beach.

After getting kitted out and walking on to the beach, I was immediately accosted by a group of drunk youths asking me what I was doing and how much was my equipment worth.

Not very much as  I made it myself was my reply and they backed off when I told them my scoop was very sharp. I was ready to go medieval but it was not necessary as I walked into the water and that put an end to that potential threat.

I continued searching in the water, although I usually would only search inside the ocean after sunrise. 

With my back to the beach pinpointing a target, two approximately five foot long spinner sharks passed between me and my search coil. 
The sharks pectoral fins brushed against my thighs, luckily I was wearing my brown shorts. 

That is it I thought, I'd rather take my chances with the land sharks. 

About an hour into the beach hunt, a bad thunderstorm rolled over the area.

I headed straight to my car and drove home, drunken lager louts, sharks and lightning, do you think someone was trying to tell me something? lol !

Today's blog is about watching your back at the beach and being aware of your surroundings.

I am sensible now at not taking chances at the beach, starting with parking and sitting in my vehicle for a few minutes to scout the area for unfriendly's.

I also prefer to check a beach out first without carrying my equipment, just in case the beach conditions looks terrible. 

Better to take a quick look at the beach conditions than waste money feeding hungry parking meters without knowing if you are going to stay.

I also never get in the ocean before sunrise, automatically taking myself off the breakfast menu.

Some people like to metal detect in the ocean at night, I do not anymore.

Get caught in a rip tide at night and your in trouble. 

Not metal detecting at the beach during a thunder storm is a no brainer to me and that was before I heard about a guy getting struck and killed by lightning metal detecting in the water at Jupiter beach.

My metal detector often tells me it's time to go when a thunder storm approaches.

A lighting strike several miles away will cause your metal detector to false. 

Better to be safe than sorry, carrying a metal detector and metal scoop on a wide open beach.

Watch your back if you are searching beaches at night and use caution near the water or during a storm as no amount of gold is worth dying for.
Put safety first and what ever it is you are searching for at the beach second. 

Site percentages

Percentages is not a word you would normally associate with beach hunting, but at heavily beaches it is good to take site percentages into account.
I always think about percentages before leaving the house, the percentages of finding something of value at the site I am heading towards with my metal detector.
I always like to stack the odds of success in my favor by taking several things into account.
At heavily hunted tourist type beaches, you may see several people searching a site or sites on a regular basis, taking the term local beach hunter to new heights. 
If three or more people are searching the same area of the beach every day, it stands to good reason your percentages of finding something good are greatly effected by joining the crowd and searching the same site.
You could say in the previous scenario you have a 25% chance of finding something in the same area, perhaps less chance of recovering something of value.
If you choose wisely to search a different area the three regular hunters ignore, your chances of success shoot up to 100% if there is anything to the be found in the area you chose to search. 
If you have a hunting partner, you get to find approximately 50% of what ever there is in the area to find. 
Assuming there are no other people searching the site at that time and you are as skilled as your hunting partner.
Your chances of a successful hunt drop even more if you have more than one hunting partner. 
Use a non waterproof metal detector or wear the wrong clothing at the beach and you cannot search inside the water effectively.
Limiting your chances of recovering all possible finds in the water if it is the place to be, unless you take off your sneakers or flip flops and cover your metal detector control box in a plastic bag.
Crowded beaches do not always guarantee you will find something, especially if you are ignoring large areas of the beach that people use.
Think of the percentages the next time you go beach hunting, are you limiting your chances of success?
The answer is probably yes if you race to beat the competition to the same site at the beach every time you go metal detecting, the fact you are joining the competition lowers your percentages of a successful beach or water hunt.
If you only water hunt or only search in the wet sand or only search in the dry sand, you lower your percentages of having a successful hunt.
I played the percentages on my last two beach hunts and recovered eight pieces of gold jewelry, on a two hour water hunt and a two hour wet sand hunt.
On the water hunt I recovered two gold chains and a gold ring, searching a local beach inside the water opposite an old beach entrance I discovered a few years ago. 
On a wet sand hunt at a different beach, I recovered five gold rings taking advantage of an area I know is a popular local water hunting site. 
I know the wet sand is ignored by the water hunters who say "All the gold or 95% of the gold is in the water" yeh right! 
After scouting out the area and seeing good wet sand hunting signs, I figured the percentages of being successful were good on the next low tide. 
Eight pieces of gold jewelry in four total beach and water hunting hours, I like those percentages. 
Put the percentages on your beach or water hunting side, by hunting smarter not harder. 

Sweep slow low and level

Your sweep speed and search coil control are often overlooked money makers at the beach. 

Slowly sweeping a level search coil close to the sand throughout the sweeping motion, will lead to detecting more valuable items.

It is not the amount of hours you spend beach or water hunting with a metal detector, it is what you do in those hours. 

If you have to spend all day at the beach swinging a metal detector to find stuff, you are swinging your metal detector. 

I guarantee the less ground you cover slowly, the more targets  you will detect.

The more targets you detect and dig, the less hours you can physically stay out at the beach digging. 

My two or three hour beach and water hunts are intense, because  I use my beach reading skills and site selection to make sure I am detecting and digging targets not covering ground.

If your beach or water hunting plan is covering more ground than the competition, you are likely sacrificing technique and finds for ground coverage.

Sweeping slow low and level means sacrificing ground for finds at heavily hunted beaches.

Just one reason why a heavily hunted beach means nothing to me, I'm probably still going to get my share because I rely on site reading skills and technique. 

Detecting targets in the sand is what beach and water hunting is all about, not covering a beach before someone else shows up to detect. 

It makes perfect beach treasure hunting sense to give yourself as much chance of detecting targets as possible. 

Sweeping your search coil slow low and level, should make sure you are not covering an area too quickly.

My sweep technique is based on a three second sweep from left to right and right to left.

I do not step forward until I have swept my search coil in front of me twice, even overlapping my sweeps if I am using a mono search coil. 

On sandy beaches my search coil scuffs or scrubs the sand, for maximum target depth. 

If what I am searching for is within detection range of the metal detector and search coil I am using, it's going to be detected.

If I end up going home empty handed I know it was not there, but that does not happen very often when you sweep slow low and level. 
These two pieces of gold jewelry were recovered while trailing a couple of speedy water hunters this weekend.
Nothing to do with metal detector choice, everything to do with sweep speed and search coil control.