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Nothing but trash... is it even possible

Bill - De

Active member
I got permission to hunt a old 25 acre farmhouse property, where the new (75 year old) brick house still stands. I not new to MDing; been using a CZ, 1266, Coinstrike, and a few Tesoro's, for years, but mostly at the beach. Bought a new E-Trac and Andy Sabich's book, and read up on it. I loaded his coin pattern, and set out on my first hunt at the beach on Saturday. The only targets I pulled out of the sand, rang as coins, but were pop tabs, broken pieces of pop-tops, and 2 screw caps. Grrrr... never did thin bad with my CZ-20.

OK. Back to the farm. I went there today, and the detector was chirping and beeping and singing constantly, with every swing. Finally realized that it somehow hot set into manual sens. Changed it to Auto. OK, a little quieter, but still multi-tone beeps, and numbers jumping all over the place, with just about every swing. All of this was in the front, side and back yards around this house. I was sure I would find solid number hits, ringing loud and clear, on some old coins, but no such luck. The 4 times I saw what I was sure were going to be nice finds, with numbers that reasonable consistently shows 12-47 or 11-??, and dug'em, they were bent rusty nails, an old fence wire staple, a round steel nut, and a round steel ball (old rusted bearing???).

I changed disc settings; went from multitone (which was driving me nuts), to 4 tone (not much better to me, and finally to 2 tone ferrous. Even then, the high tones turned out to be trash. I had it set to fast off; deep on; response normal; trash high; sens Auto (no + or -).

I left frustrated, but not empty-handed. I did find my Garrett ProPointer lying in the grass, which was lost about a week and a half ago, when my wife and I went there the first time. It apparantly fell out of her pocket (no, she wasn't using the holster). We didn't dig any good targets that time either, but I was using my C$, and she her Cutlass II. All we dug was trash that day. I can't believe there isn't some great old coins in the dirt around this place, but I am not sure I even want to go back, The E-Trac just isn't working for me yet.

I'm back to reading the book, and trying to find what I'm doing wrong. Or am I wasting my time trying hunt among all this trash? Is it even possible? I would have been happy with even a zinc penny.
 
I had one old farm do me the same way.Trash,iron and aluminum every where.I hunted that old farm 3 times and found one memorial penny.
It may have been cherry picked and all the easy signals were gone and now all the good stuff is masked heavily.
If you go back,you may have to only dig the deeper iffy signals,and go slowwwwww.
Don't forget to noise cancel and make sure the cord from the coil is tight.
Keep reading Andys book and read alot of old posts on this forum about settings,
It will get better.

Good Luck
Djay
 
Bille-De
Hate to say that sometimes that's the way the cookie crumbles.
We all have visions of barbers indians and seated coins jumping at us
at a site WE have never been to before. BUT sometimes the site we have found
just does not produce for one reason or another.
Sometimes I think that a crafty old detectorist has been there before me, but most of the time I
actually believe that nothing much has been lost there.
Take it as you will, some sites just suck.
Good luck.
Deep Digger
 
I agree with deepdigger, some sites really do just stink. Stick with the stock coin mode for now and multi conduct. It takes time but you will get it. Just make sure you open up the upper right corner of the screen and go real slow and make sure you keep your coil hugging the ground. Good Luck The Etrac will be your best friend in no time:thumbup:
 
Your asking too much too soon! It will someday just "click", but not today. You should go to a relatively clean area first. That way you can just find targets and hear the tone of coins etc and get use to it. You could just go in the back yard and throw some coins out...not as fun but effective in learning Minelabs are a different "animal" is some ways.....so you have to "hunt" in a different way.
 
Thanks for the suggestions. I will take a clean area, and set up a garden here at home, burying various good and bad targets in combination, and practice. May try that place once more (there are old foundations from out buildings I haven't even gone near yet). Will report back if I do it.
 
Yes we all anticipate about the "promised land" type of site, went to two yesterday and did not get much, a 1793 house and an 1803 house, but I have learned to take what you find and not stress about it. As for the good signals turning up junk, as you use your E-Trac more you will come to rely more on the tones and less on the numbers. Rusted iron will give you that higher tone but with experience you will learn that the iron tone "tends" to be a bit more "chirpy" and the good target tone a little "smoother". No words will be able to fully describe it for you it is something you learn by digging a lot of junk and digging some good targets. No matter what you will always dig some junk...it is inevitable. I am not a super experienced E-Trac user yet but I am learning, this is the advice that was first given me but to be honest the experience taught me more than the instruction. Go by tone and use numbers to somewhat confirm what your hearing. Do not over emphasise the ferrous number, if your conductivity number is "good" and repeatable and the depth is good dig it...you do not have much to lose and you may have much to learn. As for what is good depth that depends on where you are, when hunting with my friend we are always telling each other at what depth we found a good or bad target...it gives you a guideline for the area you are hunting. I started with an Ace 250 used it for a year going to homes and parks, in that time I found 1 silver coin and about 15 wheats. Since I got my E-Trac in not quite 5 months I have dug 125 wheats and 10 silver, two large cents, 1 Indian head, a two cent piece etc. The E-Trac is just like any other tool you need to put some time in on it and it will reward you but it will not put things under your coil that aren't there. Enjoy it and the things will come.
 
i did the same exact thing you did when i got my etac....i read andy's book, once, and off i went....played with all the buttons...went nuts....i've been reading the book until the pages all fall out....i am now finding awesome coins and a great gold bracelet...i cant seem to stop talking about that find...i just cant beleive it....i used a minlab se for a little while then got the etrac...totaly different machine....i also have found that watching the sensitivity graph when the ground conditions change i need to press noise cancel, and try changing ground to neutral or heavy trash. and switch between auto and manual....i make sure i press the noise button constantly...makes my machine run like a charm....i probably have about 60 hours into this thing..so i'm still a newbee...but i'm getting it...i was ready to sell it the first 2 weeks...so dont give up....it will just click....then go back to the farm....you will be amazed.....ginger
 
Yes the garden (or take a cent and dime out with you) and plant some items into a clean spot in the soil so you get the confidence that you are hearing what you should be hearing. It is difficult to start learning this machine in very trashy ground.

One thing - you have to slow your swing speed down, down, down - way down... to a crawl. This machine is gonna tell you about EVERY THING that it sees in that ground. It doesn't miss much. The signal processor is very fast - it can reset itself and signal the next target in quick sequence. When you swing too fast, it just sounds like garbled nonsense.

Hang in there - like she said, it will eventually click and you will be singing a different tune!
 
Bell-Two said:
As for what is good depth that depends on where you are, when hunting with my friend we are always telling each other at what depth we found a good or bad target...it gives you a guideline for the area you are hunting.

This soooo true. I remember well hunting an old armory. At first I was digging clad from 1 - 3 inches, and a bunch of junk down about 5 inches. I remember telling my buddy, "I'm so sick of digging these 5 inch signals". Then we started pulling silver from about 5 inches. After that I start focusing on just the deeper targets and really cleaned up on the silver!

Did I miss some? I'm sure, but we always miss SOME. Focus on the local conditions to maximize the targets you are searching for.
 
onemore said:
Yes the garden (or take a cent and dime out with you) and plant some items into a clean spot in the soil so you get the confidence that you are hearing what you should be hearing. It is difficult to start learning this machine in very trashy ground.

One thing - you have to slow your swing speed down, down, down - way down... to a crawl. This machine is gonna tell you about EVERY THING that it sees in that ground. It doesn't miss much. The signal processor is very fast - it can reset itself and signal the next target in quick sequence. When you swing too fast, it just sounds like garbled nonsense.

Hang in there - like she said, it will eventually click and you will be singing a different tune!

As suggested, I will slow it down, but what is confusing to a newbie, is in the E-Trac manual, it says:

"High Trash Density can be used with a slightly faster sweep, so it is suitable for use during competition hunts or in areas where speed of ground coverage is important."

I had the machine set for High trash density, and while I was in no hurry, I mis-took this to mean that a 'normal', maybe 2 second or faster swing, would be appropriate.

Will go back there ard try again, but it is about an hour and a half drive each way, so not sure when I can get back. Thanks for the suggestions.
 
I found that out just last week at a farm house I got permission to hunt. I found nothing but trash but I believe other more skilled hunters had been there before. I found only 1 memorial penney. I haven't had my etrac long enough yet though. I will just keep practicing.
 
I hunted a 100+ year old farm last year, it was abandoned so I was given the ok to hunt as much as possible. I was excited dreaming about all the old coins I would find. I made up my mind to dig EVERY non ferrous target, plus all BIG iron, just in case it was masking a good target.

In 4 trips there and 20 hours of detecting time, I found ZERO wheats, ZERO indians, ZERO old nickels, NO silver dimes, quarters.........this place just had nothing!

My buddy talked me into going back one last time and I wandered out by the barn which is normally an iron haven. Well I got a solid half dollar signal and I said to myself, NO WAY this is a half dollar, I have not even dug a single wheat cent here. Low and behold it was a semi key 1916-D walker......it was worth all the time I spent there. Look at all the crap I dug there to get this one half dollar.......amazing. So I say to you keep detecting there, there is BOUND to be something there, no place is EVER completely hunted out.
 
that phrase is for people who have used the etrac for over 100 hours...they are in a competion and have their settings suited for the ground conditions they are hunting..i read that one too....lol....did that too...lol...but if you watch the two bars for your sensitivity on the left of your machine sometimes its best to put the detector on nuetral trash and push that darn noise cancel button again...if its real trashy sometimes it doesnt work well to run your machine to hot....it makes things worse...to much noise and the machine cant get all the targets as quickly....keep reading to the end of the book and it explains that...then go back to the beginning of the book and read it again....lol...i've done the same field over ten times in all differnt modes....i'm finaly getting the colonials...there was so many nails. wich shouldnt be there by the way, according to all my studying and talking to the historical society....it drove me nuts on high trash....swing sslloowww......try nuetral trash...see if it makes a differnce...also you can try switching the auto mode plus 2 or 3...or try the manual mode....it seemed to work for me....this etrac is a totaly differnt machine....it has so much to offer but it definatly is a huge learning curve ......i'm still learning and learning...trying to anyways...good luck ginger
 
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