DeepTech Smart in Culpeper Dirt

[Carter NY]

Tried the DeepTech Smart in Culpeper VA this weekend at DIV and it handled the red dirt. Once ground balance is achieved, it will hear good targets. Most VLF's will read a good target as iron at 6-7" deep in this ironized dirt but the Smart did well.....

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBTdT4OctPY[/video]

 

[amcjavelin]

Carter would love to see more vids of actual hunts

 

[GunnarMN]

I take it at 10" it would make a low tone. how does the Gold do in that dirt ?

 

[woodchiphustler]

Glad to see it worked in that area. The ground changes so much its hard to say one location to the next.

 

[Daniel Tn]

That's actually pretty common for a VLF machine up there. As "woodchiphustler" said, the ground changes up there quite a bit...in many cases, it's mere feet that it changes in, requiring a re-ground balance. In a lot of cases you can balance a machine right where you are standing, and bury a target...and get the machine to hit it...but it's when you move away from that spot into the ever changing ground....that you start losing signals. Just as you showed later in the video when the balance was off just a little...in how it was giving the iron sound....that ground changes quite a bit and quickly...so with a VLF machine you have to really stay on top of the balance...or you will walk right over a target thinking it is iron or dismissing it as ground noise.

If you will recall when you guys were testing the Blisstool machine up there...you ran into the same thing. Somebody had located a bullet with one of the pulse machines and when you would run the coil over it...it would sputter and knock it out. It wasn't until you lowered the Disc Depth setting that you began to be able to get the bullet to come in with a really good signal. Also on that same video....John K was there with his Whites Blue & Grey Pro...on that one target you all were checking, he stood there and tuned his detector to eventually hit that target...but the way he had it set up before, it didn't give a good signal at all. Before the pulse machine rush hit the DIV hunts...everybody used VLF machines and done quite well with them, once they learned how to set them up. The pulse machines just make it easier to tune the ground totally out and run so much easier/steadier than a VLF.

My first DIV hunt I had a Fisher F75. I ran it in all metal mode....ground balanced it all the time...I could hear when the ground changed via the all metal side. I done extremely well with it up there...hunted one camp I found for all 3 days, 10 hrs a day, in an area about 50 yards by 50 yards. I dug right at 100 dropped and carved bullets, a breast plate, numerous J hooks and triangles, and about 20 buttons. By the afternoon of day 3...I couldn't get a signal at all in there anymore with my F75 and actually started moving around to other spots on the farm that people had reported finding stuff in. Some of the bullets I had dug were 5-6 inches deep and read good on my VDI screen....albeit lower than normal (normal = zinc penny range...these would read as foil/nickel) but most of the time they were deeper bullets/buttons that would read as iron on the screen. Once you start approaching the 9-10 inch mark up in that soil....most all VLFs will read them as iron. The Blisstool was a huge exception to that. By the time we returned to that particular farm...I had a Whites TDI pulse machine. I went back to that same camp just to see if I had missed any buttons since the TDI loves buttons....just wanted to kill a couple hours there until everybody kind of spread out. I ended up staying the entire 3 days in that camp again...finding stuff I had missed with my F75. I came out with 120 something dropped/carved bullets, 30+ buttons, another breast plate, and more j hooks and such.

 

[GunnarMN]

Dan i can tell you have some experiance, great post. I guess we should not judge machines by what they cant do . but use them whear they are strong, why would i aks a short guy to reach way up on the top shelf to get somthing, no i want the tall guy to do that why would i ask a larg man to go thru the co chee tunnels?. no you get a small skinny guy to do that and so it is with the detectors find out what a detector is good at and use it that way and not in its weak spots. I should not say the Vista is junk because it cant hit a high tone on a target 10" deep in culpeper dirt what am i thinking

 

[Daniel Tn]

What spoiled me a lot is that I spent about a year behind a Minelab GPX machine. In the relic fields there is nothing that can currently come close to it as far as raw depth goes. All that machine can tell you is whether it is high conductive or low conductive...but the depth it reaches is un-surpassed to date. I have on video of me digging un-planted bullets in Culpeper that were 18-22 inches deep with it that you can hear the signal before I dig...when I'm rechecking the hole after digging a foot or so...and then finally getting it out of the hole. I had to sell mine and haven't been able to get another one...so I use it as my means of comparing other machines when I really shouldn't be....it's hard not to though.

You hit the head of the nail on the head....each machine has its strength and weakness. The strength of the DeepTech machines seems to be picking non ferrous targets out of thick iron sites. That is a huge plus for certain site types..cellar holes, home sites, mill sites, etc. In a lot of cases, it is more of a benefit than raw depth. If you took a GPX into a site like that, you'd have to have a few Advil for the noise headache and wouldn't do a good job at picking stuff out of the iron.

I use another example from Culpeper at a hunt I was at with a GPX. I was digging very deep bullets and camp items in a corn field. There is a farm road that cuts through the field and I was digging stuff on both sides of the road...so naturally I tried in the road, and there were so many signals I couldn't tell one from the other on the GPX. It had a lot of farm junk on it...cause it was simply the farm road. There's a fella that goes to the hunts and posts a lot on YouTube...I ran into him in the lunch line on the last day. He hadn't found a lot of anything that hunt so I told him to follow me to the place I had been digging bullets. He was hunting an AT Pro. When we get up there...I call him over to check a bullet signal I had...he couldn't hear anything because it was so deep. After a few minutes he wandered off...and got in the road bed. He stayed there til quitting time...and dug a crapload of bullets and buttons in the roadbed itself. They weren't deep at all either...some just an inch or two deep. But his machine was a lot better for trashy sites...and thus he was able to cherry pick. The next hunt they come back to the same farm...I wasn't on that hunt, but he went right back to the roadbed and dug the whole length of it all 3 days. He found a bunch of bullets and his first breast plate. He knew he couldn't compete with pulse machines for raw depth....so he used the strength of his machine to hunt a specific application and it paid off for him big time. He had more relics than most of the guys with pulse machines.

 

[stumpr]

I am new to the Bliss and both Barry and Daniel are correct about the bad ground. I suffered with the Bliss for the first half of Day1. There were some spots
in the woods where I could not GB in either Manual or Auto with a gain of zero. The hot rocks were everywhere in the woods. Find a good hot rock and successfully GB
the Bliss and you would be bothered by several more after walking a few feet. As Daniel said, travel 100 yards, different ground and GB was no problem.......until you walk another 20 yards.
Fortunately I ended this experiment early and pulled out my TDI and did well after that. The good news is that I hunt bad ground twice a year so IF the Bliss can't handle
a particular hot wooded area so be it. I will just pull out the TDI and dig iron but some good relics as well.

 

[GunnarMN]

I think its safe to say at least 3 difrent typ of detectors would be helpfull . to own, I would like a GPX - somday

 

[Carter NY]

George is 100% correct about the Culpeper dirt. I used the DeepTech Smart all weekend and I was very happy with the results. One of the big pluses with hunting in two-tone is that you know immediately when your machine goes out of ground balance. This is important when hunting in dirt that can change every 10 yards.

Since you ground balance the Smart while in two-tone AND you also hunt in two-tone, it is very obvious when the dirt changes because you will hear either elongated high tones or elongated low tones while swinging. All you do is bob the coil up and down while adjusting the GB and then continue. There is no switching from one mode to another; you sort of ground balance on the fly....

With other VLF machines, while hunting in discriminate on this Culpeper dirt, you may not know that you are out of ground balance. If you ground balance your machine where the dirt is extreme and lets say requires a setting of 8 (out of 10), when you move to an area where the correct ground balance should only be at 6.5, you may not realize that you are knocking out good targets at depth by not being properly ground balanced. This won't happen with the DeepTech if you hunt in two-tone since you will know right away if the ground changes.

For depth, there is nothing like a Pulse machine in ironized dirt but a VLF that also works in this dirt serves a purpose.

 

[woodchiphustler]

Whats cool about two tone ground balance on the Smart is that it mimics pulse machines. You either hear high or low tones when balancing GP"s and TDI"s.

 

[Frank in NH]

Good important info on ground balancing the Vista Gold or others.