Newbe here Just getting started.

[ncdigger]

Hey everyone,
My name is Jeff Brown I live in Mount Pleasant NC just out side of Concord, NC.
Last week I got an Minelab Excalibur II Went to the beach for Thanksgiving and tried my new detector out. Well I did not do to good. Lets say I just sucked at beach hunting.. I been detecting for 30 years all of it has been relic hunting. So I got a wild hair up my a@@ and wanted to start beach and water detecting. You should have seen me, There I was, cold as heck waves knocking me over and knowing nothing about this kind of detecting, what a funny site this must have been for the on lookers...I am not giving up!! I hope this forum can help and I would like to find some friends that would take me hunting with them. Thanks for your time and any info would be grateful....ncdigger

 

[normdiver]

Well you have the perfect water machine, xcall 2, do a search of the posts and you will dig up alot of information and also check out the settings search, I think its Disc 1, No auto senstivity, put it between 11:00 and 1, threshold about where you cant hear it and keep searching, I take it you have a long handel scoop, Good Luck

 

[Eric from NC]

If you were in the waves, ouch, this weekend was rough, next time shoot me an email, maybe we can get together.

 

[GaBeachsweeper]

Welcome to the Forum Jeff. You'll find lots of good info for hunting the beaches and all ya need to do is ask.
Jim Collier

 

[harvdog42]

Welcome to the wonderful world of beach hunting.

The first thing I would tell you is that you took the difficult route going out into the waves. I would start out in the wet sand to get used to the detector. The water line up to the dry sand can hold an amazing amount of goodies at times. They tend to accumulate in pockets though. The wave size and intervals between waves has a lot to do with the productivity of wet sand hunting. I tend to put more emphasis on intervals rather than wave size. If the intervals between waves are eleven seconds or under I've found that sand will have a tendency to be removed from the beach which always exposes more targets. Intervals greater than eleven seconds have a tendency to push more sand into the wet area. Also don't underestimate target recovery technique. It's a numbers game after all. The more targets you can dig the better your chances of finding something good. It always pains me to see new beach hunters shake out all the sand in their scoop with each dig....then if they don't see a target in their scoop they take another scoop of sand and shake all that sand out also. The best way is to take a scoop of sand and recheck the hole before you even begin shaking. If the target is still in the hole just dump the load of sand in your scoop. Repeat the process until you don't get a signal anymore in the hole then the chances of your target being in the scoop approach 100%.

My biggest challenge is finding the pocket before I run out of energy. I've found that the steeper the slope the better your chances of finding a pocket...but it varies. Finding pockets is something you get better at over time. I dig everything because the weight of the object you find has significant meaning in the wet. If you are finding alot of light items then you are on the wrong line or in the wrong area. I've found that items in the wet generally follow a pattern of light, heavy, light. With light items being at the two extremes meaning that light items have a tendency to be found at the water line and also near the berm or dry sand. Of course, you want to concentrate your search on the line that is producing heavy items. I probably don't need to tell you why. And so it goes.
May the detector Gods shine their light on you.

Harvdog

 

[Chi Town Bruce]

n/t

 

[ncdigger]

Thank you everyone!!! What a great group of people here. I felt so welcome to your forum.. A few more question. How do I do a search? What are some good books I can buy? What other stuff do I need to get started, scoop, wet or dry suite and what's the difference between the two. Like I said I'm a very new greenhorn at this. Most of my ? I will hold off until I do some searching here on the forum, Thank you all, Jeff

 

[PaPa-Joe-Fla.]

Jeff, You can look at the sites on the web with tide levels and surf cams, this will give you the better times to hit the surf to hunt. Yes it can be hard to hunt a rough surf, that is when this becomes a sport instead of a hobby, but it can be very full filling when you get the gold. Good luck and WELCOME!!!!! HH

 

[Jed in NC]

Welcome Jeff! I just got my new Excal II yesterday, and am also new to hunting in the surf. There are a lot of good folks on this forum with tons of good information. HH!

 

[ncdigger]

cool, we need to hook up and hit the beach.