Dirt Gold hunting is quite an addiction!...Lots of great studies/posts done that you can peruse ...Seems the key to repeatably finding it is to commit to finding it and think hard about possible locations in your AO...narrow it down and hit it for Old Glory!...
Tid Numbers are not gonna help much...a little, but not a primary need...a fast retrieval method will help, just on account of you can pull so many more targets in a shorter amount of time...You can forget about hunting old silver if you commit yourself to dirt gold, oh sure, you will trip across an occasional silver accidentally, but you are not focused on it or set up for it like before...
You are Now focused in on foil, nickel, tabs, zincs for the most part...and aluminum fence wires, rubber wrappers, zippers, all sorts of unbelievable amounts of metallic scrap bullcrappery...
You are now hunting the top 3-4" of earth....totters, Sportsfields, the sides of parking lots where the snow is pushed, curbstrips, sidewalk entrances where the snow is pushed, BB court edges, beaches if you got em...Not nice haciendas and private pristine estates... dirty work...not glamerous.....
You have to really commit and then leave the house to hunt for Gold! Everything else is bycatch! You will be getting a lot of clad too...you gotta also consider chains, because thats where the money is...big old gold chain aint gonna Tid worth a diddly damn, but all you gotta do is find Just One to really knock heavy Jingle!...A big 14k Chain is the same as about 20 little 2gr 10k rings!
You gotta hunt locations and demographics through the fog of time and just hope to get lucky a time or two on 10,000 plus targets pulled in a season.....You will find it though, we see other Members do it, and they took the time to state about what I've written to condense it down..Gold Hunters WILL find gold!...The thing is, how much punishment and disappointment can a guy take along the way? If a guy is Married long time, they have the disappointment endurance level as well as a reason to get out of the house....
Gold is a cruel Mistress! She has no respect for effort or intelligence! Any dedicated Man chasing her, She will put through the wringer and send him home exhausted and unrewarded without even a kiss! Not like her ugly sister Silver at all!
Hell, You still wanna find Gold Eh? Well, go out and "find yourself 1000 pulltabs and 1000 pennies as fast as possible using nothing but a screwdriver" and report back? Thats what one old senior master level detectorist B'tard told me to do long ago when I asked this question as a noob.. ....and so I did!...(where you gonna find vast amounts of pulltabs and pennies?..parking lot edges, totters, sportsfields) So hey..Its like a "pull my finger" answer to this kind of a question when somebody wants to find dirt gold...right?.
I have a very high disappointment endurance level thresh hold though...married for 40yrs, two kids...So yeah...I'ma Dirt gold hunter!..I will take a Silver Sister though..or an empty can, or a roadkill, or a curb set out...damn near anything of value in Her pursuit, a guy has to have a little joy to keep him going!....