Deus in Red Dirt?

[Daniel Tn]

Has anybody ventured to the red dirt areas of VA, TN, or GA with the Deus? If so, any comments about how it handled in it? Specifically for relics but coins would be okay too.

If nobody has, and would like to know how it would do, one of you kind dealers could send me one to demo *big grin* with some settings and I'll give it a good workout and put it on video and send it back good as new LOL well it was worth trying.

 

[Finder82]

This is what Andy Sabisch said a while ago:

How does the XP Deus handle that Virginia to Georgia very highly mineralized ground that people are using the GPX-5000 on?

I have used it in teh red clay of Atlanta near Kennesaw Mountain and it pulled bullets at 10+" along with several "buck-n-balls" and percussion caps. I was going to hunt the area in Virginia which gives most machines fits but that was Presidents Day and I found myself in a few inches of snow when I got up at the hotel in Petersburg . . . . no fun! So much for global warming. I will be trying again in 2 weeks and can post the results.

 

[Daniel Tn]

Question for Andy:

Did it work good in discriminate mode in the red dirt on those 10 inch bullets, or did you have to resort to All Metal to do it? Reason I ask is that I have used several VLF machines that could go 10+ inches on minie balls in the red dirt....BUT ONLY if ran in all metal. It seems like of all the ones I've used, disc mode will get you down to 5 - 6 inches tops, and then everything starts to read in the iron range...even though it may be a bullet or even a silver coin. The only way we've found to hunt it with VLF machines is to run them in all metal...and hope that it has a fast enough processor to give a double blip sound on a nail, because to get the good stuff you have to dig all signals that read as iron. That's why I asked about the Deus. We've sort of resorted to just using pulse machines around here to get to bullets and buttons that in normal ground, would be well within reach of just about any VLF detector out there. I don't have a pulse machine as of this writing and the Deus is right there in the price range of the pulse machines...so if I decide to jump and get something that expensive I want to be darn sure it's gonna work before I jump on it. I know the pulse machines work...have been very successful in the red dirt with them in the past couple yrs...but they do have their limitations and thus the search is always going on for a better machine....and all I've seen of the Deus are a few videos and forum threads but since it's so new in the US, I've not seen anything about relic hunting with it in our beloved red dirt.

 

[Big Boys Hobbies]

Daniel we have red clay here in Oklahoma as well. In one of the spots I tried it in the XP Deus did well punching through it. Didn't hit anything past 7-8 inches but from the audio I am sure it would have went deeper if the targets were there. It ran in well at that depth in upper 80 sensitivity.

 

[John in Nawth Carolina]

Let's be clear.....there is a lot of 'red clay' around that is not mineralized. So just talking about red clay as if it was a terrible thing doesn't really provide a good frame of reference.

I encountered some red clay/dirt in NC and it was very mild.

 

[woodchiphustler]

I will stress again the bedrock here in central VA. Has more of an effect then the red dirt. You have to use all metal on deeper targets with all VLF. So far only a pulse with a ground balance can work with the bedrock but pulse machines are limited in their ability to disc. Small iron. Thirty years in the relic fields of central VA. Field tester on the TDI project.

 

[Andy Sabisch]

Having hunted in sites in the mid-west where there is clay, I have found it to be very mild and not a challenge to most detectors. The red clay that Daniel is referring to is that "crap" we deal with that starts in the eastern edge of Alabama, goes into northern Georgia and is in some areas of North & South Carolina and then the central areas of Virginia. So simply saying one hunted in red clay means little unless it is hot which most clay is not.

The area I tried the Deus at was near Kennesaw and for those that know the area, there is an area off 41 just west of Towne Center Mall that is well known for the bad ground there. Many detectors can't hit a Minnie Ball more than a few inches as you head up the hillside whcih is why PI detectors tend to dominate these areas. The Deus worked as well or better than other non-PI detectors I have used here in the past. The 12kHz frequency seemed to offer the best performance but the 18 kHz did give me sensitivity to lead and brass that turned up some percussion caps (size of .22 short casings) and buck-n-balls (fishing sinker size lead balls) down at 4" to 5".

I did get 2 bullets here one fairly shallow on the edge of the roadway (5") which target ID's correctly and was a clear "dig me" signal". The other was 15' away in the edge of the trees and bounced around . . . . fluctuating between ferrous and non-ferrous on the main screen icon with 25% black showing. The all metal non motion audio disc mode showed a more non-ferrous than ferrous signal and it turned out to be a 9" .58 caliber minnie ball. I did get some iron items but the signals tended to remain in the ferrous side of the indication . . . . . . I am planning to go back in a week or so and do some more testing in this and other areas around Atlanta that have hot, red clay conditions.

There was another spot I tried it at closer to the Mountain on some land I have access to and it is also quite hot . . . . well known for that as well in the area . . . . . let's just say it is "muddy" for those in the area that want to gauge to measure against. An hour there turned up 3 bullets - all 8"+ - and as George said in another post, the response sounded good but the target ID was ferrous . . . . . I believe that based on the response from some nails in the area that also registered ferrous, that one could identify and ignore some iron by the inconsistent response and jumpy target ID on deep targets . . . . . if you are relic hunting, I tend to dig most targets anyway as you never know what might turn up . . . shall frags, cutlery, etc.

Let me know if this helps

Andy

 

[John in Nawth Carolina]

There is one area I used to hunt that had lots of almost pure iron positive hot rocks. I used to just raise my coil (Troy X5) and they would all of a sudden disappear. Same with XP maybe?

 

[david bull]

Tennessee here.I've been hunting a pretty good site that is "hot" dirt,to the point I have to ground balance my Propointer before I can use it.Until you encounter this type of soil,you probably won't understand.Bullets will only give a true id and tone two or three inches in the ground.Using two tone ferrous on my Etrac,I watch for any hint of a conductive sound,or what we would consider falsing in most places,along with a ferrous tone.I also ignore the ferrous reading and watch the conductive numbers.Even doing this,my deepest target has been less than seven inches.Like Daniel,I would have to see a detector perform in these conditions before spending a lot of money.My Tesoro Cibola performs almost as well as my Etrac in this dirt.

 

[stumpr]

Daniel,

For what it is worth, I tried my Deus at several Culpeper DIVs. The Deus did not work well in that hot ground. Depth was extremely limited. The woods helped some with the ground mineralization but the ground was still too hot for an accurate tonal ID. Having said all this, if you intend to look for huts or trash pits, the Deus does great at checking all that lose dirt you have dug out of the hole.

 

[digginrelics]

It barely works in Culpeper Va, not even worth going hunting with to be honest.

However, I've yet to find a spot it doesn't work well in, in North GA/TN. It's great.

 

[woodchiphustler]

My friend played with it recently at DIV In Culpepper. We where testing and using VLF's on Day 2 and buy notching out the bedrock reading he dug some targets down to 8 inches. Not bad.