XP Deus in the Rocky Mountains ?

[gregD]

Hey all, I'm pretty new to the Deus and have been learning a lot from Andy's book while hunting here in farm-country-midwest. A friend and I are going to be taking a long weekend out west to do some hiking and camping and we were going to bring our detectors to hunt around a mining camp from the 1860-1890 period. I've never detected out there but here are my thoughts..

-It's been visited a fair bit in modern times and recent human trash is present
-it was a large mining camp, with a few dozen small buildings (remains still visible, mostly) and a post office, so i assume it had a decent population
-it has a lot of iron contamination, chunks and sheet pieces. All over.
-i assume (?) the ground mineralization is high
-I assume (?) being in the dry west with less vegitation, things dont get buried as deep as here in the midwest maybe ?

I would like to see if we can pull out some cooler older stuff (i would love a few old coins, but that might be wishful thinking) amidst all that junk.

If anyone has hunted a site like that I would really appreciate some pointers on where to set the program on my Deus to start with. I'm sure I will tweak for conditions but just not sure where to start exactly.

I'm thinking 12 or 18khz for frequency and maybe trying Pitch mode to find deeper things?

Any other suggestions or things to try are welcome!

 

[squirrel1]

Personally I would use reactivity 2 or 3 18 kHz,,full tones,,run my disc around 2.5 with 9" coil,,,11" coil around 3.3 on the disc.

Reactivity setting of 4 help in places,,,listen for the super short tone.

Silencer -1 for all hunting.

If no Deus has been there,,,it should show pretty quickly.

Dig based solely on the tone,,,forget the meter readings.

If over clean ground adjacent to site,,if these suggested disc settings seem to be providing too much ground noise,,raise them just a bit.
11" coil should be the one that gives trouble if one does,,moreso than the 9" coil.

 

[sprchng]

The Rockies area is a pretty big space and ground conditions vary immensely so any guess on settings is just that , a guess. If as you assume the ground is highly ionized and arid , depth will not be an issue as you won't be going deep or be able to dig if you did get a deep signal. I have dug early 1900's wheats in soil like that which has never been disturbed , usually about 3 or 4". Therefore , run your silencer where your machine is comfortable , -1 won't get you anything but audio fatigue.
If it's wet , all bets are off , and the soil moisture could change from saturated to 3% in 10' going up a slope.

If there is modern trash present the better question is going to be what you are going to dig with , especially with the Deus as you will be digging early and often , but that should apply regardless of what detector you are using in a site like this. A long handled pick with a magnet like a 30" Badger will be your best friend

 

[gregD]

thanks for the replies guys. I intend to be methodical with my searching and liberal with the targets I dig. Will be there for 2 full days of detecting. I have a long handled shovel so I wont have to bend down too much for junk I hope....A friend of mine did a cursory scouting of the area and said he was able to dig with a shovel just fine...he only used his detector a little bit casually as he walked around but found a .32 short rimfire case which is a pretty old caliber... those ring pretty high tones so hopefully that bodes well for other good targets to still be there undiscovered by prior detectorists..

I am looking at some of the powerful magnets to mount to a walking stick or something to help clear little bits of iron around a questionable signal.

i think our approach is going to be to look for the smaller less obvious remains of structures and work between them. I have an 11" coil on my Deus...friend has a Garret AT Gold. I'm trying to make an XP convert out of him hope this opportunity allows for that