Big Boys Hobbies

Dig "Everything" Thoughts???

wvdave107

wvdave107

Elite Member
Joined
Apr 7, 2017
Messages
574
Location
Charleston, WV
Have some general thoughts about the dig "everything" mentality. Being relatively new to the hobby I like to dig as much as I can to learn the tones and VDIs of my machine, but is that really the best course of action when hunting in an extremely trashy park?

Unfortunately, I don't really have any solid permissions at this point, but that is mostly my fault do to time constraints and work issues. I typically hunt a park close to the house that is Littered with pull tabs, bottle caps and cans due to decades of use. I'm sure there is more there than junk. I find quite a bit of clad, mostly 2"-4" deep.

Again, there has to be more there than clad and pull tabs. When I first started hunting there I dug everything, I mean everything. I came out with dozen and dozens of pull tabs, etc..., but no rings or anything of interest. I have learned the sound of different clad compared to trash, so that is a plus. I don't mind finding clad, actually I enjoy finding something of value, even it's only a penny...LOL

Seems the dig everything thought doesn't always work. I know there have been other detectorist there, ran into one last week. Only one I've ever seen there. Anymore, I find myself digging the solid clad tones and do OK. Occasionally I'll dig a solid 45-48, but it's always foil. Same goes for the 50's and 60's I dig, bottle caps and pull tabs. Literally, you can't swing your coil without getting a tone...Does anyone else have this dilemma and if so how do you overcome it? Dig everything and spend a couple of valuable hours digging trash or be selective and dig the "low hanging fruit", so to speak?

Sorry for the long post. Just curious on how to handle the issue. Thanks for taking the time to read and/ or reply....HH
 
I think it's a trade off, dig everything you have a chance at gold but also buckets of trash. If in a hot spot will even dig iron since could be clad coins, my 2 cents .

Location is a key also for gold, where could people loose gold more often. Example baseball fields as they throw the ball around , old swim pools,beach etc. Not a fun hobby to dig pulltabs all day so myself use some disc.

To be honest the very best hunters I see posting with super finds do dig trash to get at the treasure .Try those soft beeps often a deep silver coin. hh
 
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I tried digging everything with a buddy a while back. It was in a park we'd all milked, especially in certain spots. We lasted maybe half an hour. Then it was business as usual. IMO, it just ain't practical to dig it all unless you're on a sand beach.

I have to get at least a half decent, two way tone, or a TID that shows 50% promise. I'll take my share of trash. After my share, digging it all only causes me to quit early.

I did do it lot in learning at the beginning. TGod I learned enough to discriminate to a happy(er) medium. I'd have to have a really good interest in a spot to ever do it again.
 
Funny how you mention this, because yesterday I was thinking about exactly that what you've just mentioned, as I'm curious to see if people who have dug EVERYTHING, have had much success.

Personally, I dig the higher signals, and sometimes the shallow low tones if I'm confident that it's a clad coin. I don't like passing up pull tab and foil signals in parks, because I have found gold rings in the past which have sounded like those, but I know the chances of it being another piece of junk is much greater than it being gold.

But I have wondered that if you clear out an area of shallow modern junk (bottle caps, foil, pull tabs etc.), if you would have greater chances of finding deeper silvers which may have been masked by the shallow trash.
 
I'm hunting on private permissions right now but when I have dug at the local park, I went bonkers trying to dig all the hits. It was so trashy. I got pickier and found more success. But, to each their own. If you have lots of energy, the weather is good and you have nothin' but time...dig em all!
 
Location and the desired target make all the difference to me for digging it all or being picky about what to dig. If I'm at our park which sounds like yours, trashy I mean, or any other trashy site, I only dig good sounding tones unless I am just in the mood to do a short dig it all type session for grins. If I'm out hunting relics, I dig everything. In cleaner silver/gold potential sites I dig a lot, and often every signal.
 
I have encountered some of this- my solution has been to rotate different sites and to focus on a specific VDI range and use discrimination to filter out other tones. On "high tone outings" i still dig some screwcaps and pulltabs- along with the clad quarters, dimes and occasional silver ring. Other days, i've tried to focus on finding nickels (and gold?!). I'm digging a LOT less trash these days and ending up with a better collection of brass fittings, sprinkler parts and mystery doodads along with coins.

Using the 5" x 8" DD coil has helped a bit - some of these old grounds are so full of targets that it was just not practical to wade through it with a bigger coil... at least as a beginner learning the machine. Good luck!
 
BBsGal said:
Location and the desired target make all the difference to me for digging it all or being picky about what to dig. If I'm at our park which sounds like yours, trashy I mean, or any other trashy site, I only dig good sounding tones unless I am just in the mood to do a short dig it all type session for grins. If I'm out hunting relics, I dig everything. In cleaner silver/gold potential sites I dig a lot, and often every signal.
Click to expand...

I am a dedicated FBS user now, SE and Etrac and have adopted the same phylosophy of the a few of my new FBS friends who say, "I like it when general hunters clean out the trash." The deep silvers not reached by others are then there for the FBS to dissect.

Did it all, dig it all ;-)
 
I really appreciate the comments. I think locations is the key. If your at a site with a lot of trash the chances of digging it increase tremendously....Duh. I usually don't have time to dig everything. At times I'll dig more signals, but typically stick to the higher tones. I don't think this particular park could ever get cleaned of all the trash targets. My clad take has come up since I started using the 5X8 coil. Seems to help wade through a lot of the junk.
 
For starters: Any time you hear someone say "dig everything", they usually mean: Everything EXCEPT IRON.

And yes: At junky urban old parks, I'm shooting explicitly for high conductor deep silver / copper. So kiss old nickels and gold goodbye. Reason ?

a) If gold is your agenda, then WHAT THE HECK are you doing at junky urban parks trying to strip-mine ?? Your ratios could easily be 200 to 1 or worse !! If gold jewelry is your agenda, then simply go to swimming beaches.

b) nickels will invariably be sickly orange and brown cr*p. Of which very few have numismatic value . Silver comes out sseeoo nice. No ground kiss in most soils.
 
If it's a park where you will spend some time with future digs, I'd start with a 20' x 20' area and grid it out and as suggested above, clean out the shallow trash.
Then spend an hour each time you go to redo that area and find what you may have missed.
Then spend the rest of your time doing other areas of the park and systematically clean each area out.
If there are valuable targets your good finds should go up.
Good luck!
 
I'm withe the ones above that say if it's your "home field" then get to cleaning. It's gonna be the place you go when you've got 45 minutes before dinner. other areas are on a case by case scenario. You paid good money for a machine that gives you valuable information, you don't have to dig the iron to know its iron but sometimes you do. I saw a guys signature on here the other day, "dig to learn or learn to like digging" you can learn what your machine is telling you or dig em all.
 
Dig everything?

Trashy parks....nope, including nickle signals.

Older sites.....yep

I found a silver ring a couple weeks ago, came in at coin range.
 
All depends on mood and location. Out in the woods where signals a scarce I'll dig everything. My collection of pellets & .22 casings it getting quite large. Parks, totters, ballfields etc I will typically cherry pick the high tones or repeatable mid tones that aren't to jumpy. Most of the ones I go to are near home so if I miss something now I'll get it later. Don't see many out swinging in my parts anyway.
 
For me, relatively new at detecting and still learning my ATP, I will do some of both. Some days I'll just dig high tones because I'm not in the mood for all that trash. Other days I'll dig everything just to get an education on what my ATP is telling me.

There are situational exceptions to this. REALLY trashy area and I'm only high tones only. really low signal area and I'm always digging everything.

BCD
 
I've been running an experiment all summer at the local city park where we have pounded it with every imaginable detector and with E-Tracs over the last 6 years. 4 months ago I decided to start a test and see if my cherry picking was missing all these goodies. I have been videoing the hunts live as I go. So far, after 4 months, I got tons of video showing me digging a lot of trash. Not a one single coin.

So far I'm not convinced the "dig-it-all" concept is sound. At least not in my case it hasn't been.
 
I did my own personal test this year to dig 500 pull tab (or so) signals to see how many more nickels I got and how many gold rings I could find. The results were that I did increase my nickels substantially including 10 war nickels, but I to date have only found one gold ring this year. Was great to find the gold but my knees can't take too much of the up and downs.
 
Martin_V3i said:
I tried digging everything with a buddy a while back. It was in a park we'd all milked, especially in certain spots. We lasted maybe half an hour. Then it was business as usual. IMO, it just ain't practical to dig it all unless you're on a sand beach.

I have to get at least a half decent, two way tone, or a TID that shows 50% promise. I'll take my share of trash. After my share, digging it all only causes me to quit early.

I did do it lot in learning at the beginning. TGod I learned enough to discriminate to a happy(er) medium. I'd have to have a really good interest in a spot to ever do it again.
Click to expand...


This.

I dig a LOT more than my hunting buddy, who only digs the strongest repeatable signals. I do get more junk but I also seem to get more goodies. But do I dig it all? Not a chance. At one point, sure, but now I'm much better at telling what's a pull tab and what's something else.

Especially when you get into remote areas with a lot of .22 brass or nails or what have ya. Annoying. That being said, I think that at first, digging it all is a WONDERFUL thing to do because, in pretty short order, you'll learn the different things your detector is telling you and you can avoid 70% of the nonsense.

Learning the machine, in my opinion, is far more important than digging it all.
 
I only dig everything at very few locations. I hunt mostly ballfields and parks. Far too much junk to dig everything. If I spent the little time I have digging mostly trash, when will I have time to dig the good stuff? Ive started a pull tab count this year, and I'm well over 500 pull tabs without a single piece of gold. So that makes me a little more comfortable NOT digging everything. Now me and my buddies rev war dwelling field permission, everything is dug.
 
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