Would you walk away from an ultra trashy area?

Happa54

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Los Angeles, CA.
Hello Fellow MD'ers...

I'm curious about how you/anyone would hunt an extremely trashy area.

Here's the scenario;

It's a park in So Cal that has seen activity since the late 1790's and most probably seen it's glory days in the 1800's to present.

I swing a Minelab Safari (approx 6 months now) with settings; sens 16, high trash, conductive, 6x8 sef coil (but I toggle back & forth from ferrous).

I typically stay in conductive crossed saved to relic so I can easily toggle between that and AM.

The ground is trashy enough in conductive but when I go to ferrous mode, the numbers on my digital readout rolls just like a slot machine and sounds from low grunts to high tones make you think you are on hallucinagenics. If I had a GoPro I would record it to show.

This place has been pounded out but there has got to be a ton of good stuff in the ground. I'm sure most MD'ers have taken all the easy stuff on the top but when confronted by all the tones, beeps, grunts, and overwhelming digital reads, I'm sure most give up and head out of the park.

Would you hunt this or walk away knowing that the easy stuff is gone and now you have to work like hell?

I don't want to give up on this area. At the very least it should make me a better MD'er.
 
I love places like this, found some of my best treasure in places like you describe including some bucket listers.
Plus, I love a challenge.

I don't use Mine labs, Fishers are my weapon of choice, but I have figured out ways to get around most of that trash and iron and target the good stuff.
Took me hours of experimenting and finding some not so common outside the box settings and learning to notice some strange but repeating target behavior but I did it...and it was a labor of love.
Dug a ton of trash while learning these things too.
It did make me a better hunter and now I have some new very useful skills that I can use as long as I am able to pick up a detector.
Pretty sure most brands and detectors have this ability, somewhat, the key is the owners spending the time and effort to learn their tools at a deeper level and more than just well.
To me these kinds of sites aren't scary or frustrating in the least but fun instead, then again I can be a little weird in my thinking.
 
Just have to decide your level of trash tolerance, then
set your discrimination point and dig everything
that is a repeatable consistent tone.

Super trashy areas are frustrating but if it's a spot
you will return to often just concentrate on one small
area at a time.

Although it's tedious just remember that no matter the detector
used the more trash you remove the more goodies will be unmasked.
 
If I were low on places to hunt then I might take on such a site. Otherwise I prefer a much higher return on my time investment. LOL
 
I love places like this, found some of my best treasure in places like you describe including some bucket listers.
Plus, I love a challenge.

I don't use Mine labs, Fishers are my weapon of choice, but I have figured out ways to get around most of that trash and iron and target the good stuff.
Took me hours of experimenting and finding some not so common outside the box settings and learning to notice some strange but repeating target behavior but I did it...and it was a labor of love.
Dug a ton of trash while learning these things too.
It did make me a better hunter and now I have some new very useful skills that I can use as long as I am able to pick up a detector.
Pretty sure most brands and detectors have this ability, somewhat, the key is the owners spending the time and effort to learn their tools at a deeper level and more than just well.
To me these kinds of sites aren't scary or frustrating in the least but fun instead, then again I can be a little weird in my thinking.

yea you're pretty good....:lol::shock: ready to go hunting again
 
I would certainly give it a go, unless you are just overrun with other, better places to hunt. Any challenge that makes you better is a challenge worth taking.

BCD
 
Due to it's age and history, I would try it for a few hours. I would mark out a box 10ft x 10 ft or smaller and start out working with my smallest coil (5 inch on my f75), and go very slowly listening for repeatable non ferrous signals, digging all of them. Every removed signal will improve this area for detecting deeper and masked targets. Best of luck. Hope you find some CA gold! :thumbsup:
 
Before I bought my Racer 2, I might have given up & left the area. With my Racer 2, I would enjoy a chance to pull something out of there. Just recently bought a used Deus off of a friend. Getting back used to working with it. Took it to an area this weekend that sounds like you are talking about. With Gary's sifter program, the area was huntable using my Deus.

So yes I would definitely hunt that area. Of course, I'm always desperate for a new site so I tend to hunt a site to death.
 
I hunt a mid 1800's church from time to time. TTF is the only way to hunt this place and keep your sanity, lol

I have made some good finds there including the 3 oldest coins I've ever dug!

Low and Slow!
 
sites like this can be annoying until you pull that good find out of the trash. let the FBS do its work and go really really slow. analyze each signal you come across and do a small area at first. if its repeatable and not iron then dig it up
 
I use my Snake coil at these places, ootherwise I don bother. Can't take all the noise !!
 
These can still be productive sites , but since they have been hunted a lot I have a strategy that not only can help me keep from spending so many fruitless hours digging trash , but will usually put me right where I need to be for best results. Think of all the obvious and best looking areas as the worst areas and consider all of the worst " why would anybody hunt there ? " areas to be the best ones. Everybody has already hit all the good looking areas and they are usually so trashy that what everyone else left behind is rarely worth all the work. In a place like that , if 100 people have hunted there its likely that all 100 hunted those best looking spots , but if you go around the outside edges , or along fences , dirt piles out back , ditches , .....any place most people might avoid , a lot fewer people have hunted there.....sometimes nobody hunted those particular spots. Lots of times they are cleaner , though not always. But the good stuff to trash ratio can be a lot better. There can still be some virgin ground in places like that , its where few people if anybody at all would think to hunt.

There is always something left behind at sites like this , but at some point you have to question whether its worth digging 60 junk targets per square foot all day long to find the one target left behind on the other side of the site. Instead , hit the much less desirable areas , which are still just as old and have still had thousands of people on them over the years , good potential ugly areas.
 
Hey thanx everyone for the responses.

Point well made about digging in the less obvious places. I guess I better reach down into the bushes once in a while. Really!!! I will.

The reason I am so determined with this area is that I recently dig up a couple of mercs within 20 feet of each other in an extremely hunted out and trashy park. In another park not far away another merc within 10 minutes but had to high tail it out of there due to drug activity. There have been other silver finds at the old Los Angeles parks and sidewalks but you gotta be consistent, patient and tenacious in the hunt.

At the park that is responsible for this post I need to mention that I also tried a low trash setting and the FBS couldn't process fast enough to keep up with my extremely slow swing of the coil. It was almost as though the FBS had gone to sleep on me or was simply processing too many targets and couldn't figure out which one to give me. Had to switch back to high trash mode. Interesting, huh?

I have a ton of places to hunt but I will keep going back to this place because of the people who have lived and played in this area over the last 200+ years.

I will hit it hard in ferrous for as long as I can stand it.

Thanx again for all your positive feedback.
 
Put on the small coil and dig the good stuff.

You can set up for coins only or look for rings by digging it all. Good luck.
 
Yeah!...Everybody needs to find the trashiest park in their AO just for practice and the challenge if nothing else. They sure do teach a guy a lot about masking and picking through settings, alternative coil manipulation techniques, proportional audio, etc...

I have one here that is an old yet active park that was built with foundry slag, its like hunting inside a dumpster full of ball bearings! A guys ears get fatigued after about an hour, but its always a fun and productive place to hunt, mainly for clad and jewelry...its a trophy when you pull a nickel amongst all the tabs..I hit it after the festivals and the ground is a carpet of pulltabs and screwoffs! A wild cacophany on every swing!:laughing:

If a guy has a nasty place, and allows it to teach them its secrets, then the World is about your oyster anywhere else you may go....Its like a classroom...You gotta show up and participate to earn that Masters degree!

Not a whole lot of other detectorists even dare try and thats understandable...I bet theres a gold coin in yours somewhere...
 
Those are my favorite types of places to hunt. Others give up on them and if you know your detector, what to listen for and swing slow then stuff can be found. Good post!
 
Remove all trash. Don't throw it back.
If you do this, the trash will become lesser, and the good deeper signals will become more.




(disclaimer: that is, if it's a good spot with some history where there is something to be found. And as there is that much 'trash' ...;))
 
I would use a small coil (DD) Go slow and listen for high tones to cherry pick silver.
Yesterday I dug some iron in hopes of unmasking something underneath but no luck.
You could dig everything like the guy I met in Ukiah,Ca. :laughing:Oh he had a whites.:lol:
 
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