Indian Head, Odd VDI, 705+Digger Question

[Venner]

So I have a well-hidden-away site in now-dense woods by a lake that used to be a popular swimming beach, up until about the 1920s. It yielded my first silver with my new X-Terra 705 + 3Khz DD Digger coil -- a 1917D Walking Half in great condition, what a whopper! -- and a couple of subsequent hunts have so far yielded mostly bird shot and many, many old shotgun shell caps.

I have dug two Indian Heads at the location now, an 1884 and an 1887. I've found three other Indians elsewhere since owning this detector, and they all read in the high 26-28 on the VDI. At this site, however, the first one came up as a solid 40. The second one, came up as a very solid 42...but only in one direction. It came up as -8 (iron trash) when I swept it left to right, or at any 90

 

[Old Longhair]

A lot of factors go into the TID. Ground moisture, mineralization, and depth are the primary and most common reasons.
As low as your ground phase is, if the ground was also dry the response that you got is about what I'd expect. Conditions like that are about as tough as it gets. You might want to try Prospector Mode to locate potential targets, then switch over to C/t Mode to see what ID you might get. Prospector mode could easily see too deep to get a decent ID with mineral levels that high.

 

[Digdoggy]

I've never had too much trouble with the TID with the 705 other than I started out new a few months ago and was running sensetivity too high. Especially with the high mineralization I was in. Once I lowered it to 18-20 it was really locking on the clad. Stable. Until as LH says I didn't know what was causing my 705 to start TID bouncing all over on any target. Then tought after-- its was dust bowl dry from very little rain and temps up to 90

 

[Venner]

For the woods, where I don't expect to find a *ton* of metal, I have begun to find that it is quite helpful to run in prospecting mode at high sensitivity to get greater depth. When I come near a target, I then switch back to all-metal mode and drop the sensitivity as needed. (I found a silver dime this way at about 10 inches that didn't even show up at less than 26 sensitivity in AM mode. Wow.)

After a rain, I definitely dial the sensitivity way back, otherwise I get reflections and bounceback causing falsing like crazy. Moist soil = easy to find stuff

Thanks for the thoughts. I know one thing: this detector/coil combo is finding tons of things under conditions I'd never have been able to hunt before!