Hunting in iron, don't believe the screen #s

[squirrel1]

I have witness many times, I'll get a short choppy high tone when swinging. Center the coil and vary sweep speed and still the same broken high tone. Sometimes even when rotating around target with coil while sweeping the tone remains broken or disappears altogether. Screen readings have been at times reading 3 sometimes 4 sometimes 5. And my disc was generally set between 5.6 and 6.8. Now some folks might think these signals are in fact iron. Believe me been there and done that. Not all will be a good target, but I'm finding a pretty high percentage of them are good targets. Things to look/listen for are, when you find the best sweep speed that gives the best audio (although broken) try and use that same sweep speed and coil placement. Does the target yield "almost" exact same tonal characteristics?? Also watch the horseshoe. Does the left portion stay highlighted on all sweeps? If so more likely iron. But if the horseshoe's right portion stays highlighted on all sweeps, probably nonferrous target (big iron excluded). Now, what if the sweeps cause the horseshoe to flicker on both the right and left portions? A toss up could be ferrous or nonferrous. But remember what I said earlier about audio when sweeping, Does the target provide almost "exact" same audio although broken? Let's talk a little more about the audio. The audio that nonferrous brings into the deus is a more mellow sound , sweeter. The sound comes almost instantly when the coil passes over a nonferrous target. There is not the sound of rejection, like the big iron makes with Deus. The tonal differences are not as exaggerated (difference between say iron and silver coin) when severe masking is going on. The tonal difference is still there nonetheless. And with practice you'll better see what I'm referring to. In iron trust trust your ears far more than your eyes when using the Deus. Nothing wrong with looking at the meter though. It's how we can better find and use the small, not talked about, less obvious behavior characteristics of the Deus. In doing so we can all make more finds with our machines.

 

[Low-Boy/LCPM]

For me in a carper full of nails that are sqaure nails and ring out all over the place from 1-88 I get a clean clipped sound using two tones. But it seems it will let go of the target really fast and if you slow down you can't lock on your target. When mixed in with those nails you get a target you can repeat when slowing down the swinging of the coil it is sometimes large iron like horse shoes or sheets of rusted iron. Found some good relics this way and a lot of shot gun short shells that mimick a coin. So a lot of the targets that had a high number and were between a short tone and one that would repeat turned out to be square nails. And once you start digging and put you coil over the dirt I will get the iron grunt. My ground as I'm sure others have is a tough ground to hunt in when wet or after a rain and the ground is still moist...lots to learn on the deus but I am getting better with each hunt.

 

[CZconnoisseur]

That's great advice - the control box is not needed when hunting the worst "iron polluted" sites! Yesterday I hunted in the rain at some old homesites and most of the older, deeper coins didn't sound too great when I first come upon them. I was using full tones, and many signals indicate fairly well in one direction, but on a cross scan there was no audio, or different audio. I've learned to dig ALL of these types of signals, since in many cases it will turn out to be a coin co-located with something else metallic. Went back over the same area in a different direction and pulled MORE coins!!! I love the Deus!

Many bottlecaps will sound like coins in 12 khz, and vice versa. Once you get comfortable with the audio component of a signal and how good targets sound in trash - you will start finding some of the best items!

GL & HH

 

[Mega]

If i am detecting on a iron infested roman,celtic or saxon site over here in the UK which indicates that a lot of habitation in the area,its best to go by tones only and especially if the targets are deep,some of these sites its best to use the small 9'' coil and work the site methodically,but the Deus excels on these sites.

Alot of our finds go back 2000 + years so they could be deeper than what the screen would register a normal target correctly but the tones are still pretty accurate at much greater depth,also the wide spectrum of silver,bronze and also gold in our finds is not all the same content.This why its always wise to listen to those feint deep targets that the controller wont even register but the headphones will still give you a reasonable indication.

So although i do have a controller with me,on most of these sites unless the targets are not deep ones you might as well either take the controller off or place something over it,hence this is why i often say i use it mostly as a tonal machine,the experiance of the operator is the listening to the sounds and not looking at the screen.