Minelab Safari Relic hunting

[Mississippi]

I am new to this forum and was thinking about getting a Safari, but have a question since I live in Virginia I was wondering if any one has used the Safari in the relic hunting mode in the Virginia HOT soil? Would like to hear your results if you did. Thanks

 

[TomH]

Mississippi,

I saw your post over on the DIV site and was going to answer you there. I have used the Safari at three DIV hunts, two at Hansbrough Ridge and once at Brandy Rock and each place had its own set pf problems. At the Ridge, I found a couple of places where the machine worked well and got buttons and bullets, and a cool Enfield bulllet puller, from 8 to 10 inches. There were areas however where you had to forget everything you know about the machine and start learning from scratch. Signals sounded way off from normal soil, but were consistent. Brass sounded pretty much like brass but lead was weird. Once you learned the sound of lead in that location all the lead sounded the same, but I would have walked away from the target in better soil. I was able to spend some time alongside two of the most experienced Minelab guys on the east coast while at that hunt and learned more about the machine in two days than in the year and a half that I had owned it.

At Brandy Rock farm however, I got skunked. We were on a hill that was so mineralized that nobody but the PI machines were getting good targets. After two days of digging nothing but nails that sounded just like bullets or buttons I finally ran into a long time Minelab user that lived there and he told me that on that hill I needed to walk away from the good signals and dig only the bad sounding signals that read -8 or -9 on the TID. I can't tell you how many -8/-9 with bad sounding signals that I walked away from! I got rained out on the last day so I didn't get to see if he was right.

The Safari worked as well as the Etracs and Explorers at the hunt, at least as well as the F75 Fishers and better than the MXTs and Visions (In my most humble, but seriously biased, opinion). The only better machines were the PI units with the Minelab 4500 being the best of the whole bunch. I found two small dribbles of melted lead at around 10 inches in some of the worst soil adjacent to H Ridge, so the Safari will find stuff there. You just have to take an "everything you know is wrong" approach and dig every sound until you get a picture of what stuff sounds like in the "wed dut".

Good Luck,
TomH

 

[Mississippi]

Tom,
Thanks for the information. I ordered the Safari and it should be here this week. I see you are on the Alt list for this up coming fall hunt, hopefully you will make the participates list and we can hook up for some tips. I am a MXT user and have been to nine of these hunts and have had pretty good luck with this machine.

I own a Minelab Sovereign that I bought back in the 90's and used it in Mississippi and Alabama with a lot with great success that is why I was looking at another Minelab. Have let some freinds use it here in Virginia and they did alright with it. Have not used it at any DIV.