Getting past the ground clutter

[Wild West]

I live in Wyoming in an area where there are MANY locations that, at one time, where towns. There where railroad towns, coal towns and a couple gold towns. Sounds like a treasure hunters dream or so I thought when I got my GTI 2500 last year. Being new to the hobby I am still learning my equip. but I have one big problem, ground clutter. These old sites are covered with remains of old tin cans and some of the pieces are about the same size as coins and they will trigger the bell tone and register just like a coin. There is metal everywhere! There are old RR rails buried and and car parts mixed in with pluming pieces. Copper and lead also are fairly common in small pieces.
I get so frustrated. I've been working at trying to notch out these things but I end up looking for nothing.
These old towns are common sites for anybody with a detector and they have been picked through since metal detectors where invented.
I understand that there is likely something left somewhere and I am willing to take the time to look but I could really use some good advice. I've found some places like parks and my detector works great but I want more than 70s vintage coins. Any help is needed and welcomed.

 

[Mick in Dubbo]

It sounds like you need the sniper coil for this. Also, knock out notch 12, as iron can bleed through and hit here. Move real slow if you are getting a lot of hits and remove surface metal if you want to hunt under it.
Turning down your sensitivity will help as well. You'll have to play around with it to get the right balance. Regardless of which brand of detector you have, it'll be a difficult spot to hunt, but patience will have it's reward.
You will most certainly want to hunt each bit of ground from multiple angles as target masking will be going on a lot.
If the ground is too bad to give you a steady target reading, you may want to ignore the visual information and let your ears tell you when you have got something interesting. You'll dig more junk, but recover more good stuff as well.
Good luck.
Mick Evans.

 

[Mick in Dubbo]

I hunted a spot last year that was utterly saturated with steel crown caps. It was a park where the New years celebrations were held and a vantage point over looking the Sydney harbour fireworks display. There was literally at least 30% of the ground that you couldn't see because of rubbish, with the rest of the ground still holding a lot of junk, including metal junk. This park is used like this every year. Despite the level of junk (which has caused a number of other operators give up in frustration) I was using the 5x10 DD Scorcher coil. despite being a DD coil, I found that coins gave off a slightly different tone than crown caps. Crown caps are a bit more erratic. The coins was looking for, hit in your zinc penny range. I've heard that a lot of comments about US operators complaining about crown caps sounding like coins (most likely because of the area they can show up on the meter) but I'm pretty sure that you'd soon be able to tell them apart by their lack of consistency, both visually and by sound.
Just a thought.
Mick Evans.
P.S. I recovered over a $100 out of this park in a single day. Bottom line is, that the GTI will handle it.

 

[metalhead]

Yeah man, Wild West, we feel your painThere's not a metal detector made that will sift through all the rubbishbut that GTI 2500 is one of the best and still a top contender after well over a decade. Mick offers some great advice. Ghost Towning can be a real pain in the rump sometimes due to all the trash metal. Just do your research and try to concentrate on places that were less industrial and more of a festive type gathering area. It's not easy, but the adventure sure can be fun and rewarding.

TREASURE CACHES
A very neat thing about ghost town/former residential areas is the possibility of locating buried loot. Back in the old days, peolpe didn't trust banks and would stash/bury their money. I'm certain that there are countless fortunes waiting to be had. A good investment, since you already have the GTI 2500, would be the depth multiplier Treasure Hound w/Eagle Eye. This device converts your machine into a deep seeking two-box unit that ignores smaller bits and pieces of trash metal and punches down deep to locate hidden caches, etc. A great book that I can recommend to you is "Treasure Caches Can Be Found" by Charles Garrett. Another great read is "Ghost Town Treasures/Ruins, Riches and Relics" also by Charles Garrett. The wealth of information contained therein and the proper equipment can get you a long way. Best of luck to you in your treasure hunting adventures! Keep us posted! Happy Hunting!

By the way, Mick, that 5"x10" double "D" is my favorite searchcoil........on any machine!