AirmetTango
Forum Supporter
I use a pretty wide variety of pinpointing methods, including the wiggle back method, depending on the situation. In the case of an open farm field where plug size and cleanliness isn't an issue, a "right between the eyes" accurate pinpoint is rarely as important to me as gathering other information about the target that the wiggle back method won't provide as easily.
I guess my original post made it sound like I was Xing over the target strictly to pinpoint - that's not really what I was doing. This field (and many of the fields I hunt) are heavily iron infested, including lots of bent square nails and other iron itty-bitties that love to false high in at least one direction on both my EQ800 and my previous detectors. What I usually do with a good sounding target - when I'm taking my time - is stop, and quickly circle the target, swinging the detector across the target from multiple directions. When you're good at it, it only takes an extra 2 or 3 seconds, and it gives me a lot of extra information about the target (consistency of signal, sharpness, etc) and can much more accurately rule out iron and other trash. As luck would have it, by paying attention while circling the target in such a way, I'm simultaneously Xing over the target, pinpointing with sufficient accuracy to nail 99.9% of my field targets. Basically kills two birds with one stone - doing the wiggle back or other pinpointing methods at that point would actually cost me time. In this particular case, I got bit by complacency - the tone was so obviously good, I didn't even circle completely around the target to confirm it. In fact, I didn't even go 90 degrees...a couple swings in the original direction, a couple more at maybe 45, and I knew it was a digger. So it was a target confirming "X" more than it was a pinpointing "X".
But truth be told, in most of my hunting, I generally use the built in pinpoint feature before using the wiggle back method. Again, I feel that it provides more information about the size and shape of the target more quickly than the wiggle back.
I agree, the wiggle back method is very quick and has good accuracy - if you know you're going to dig the target based on a good one- or two-way signal, you can't beat the efficiency: swing, hear good tone on that one swing, wiggle back, retrieve, repeat. I generally need more convincing to dig, so I take the time to gather more info.
The short story long is, for me, I'm generally not trying to set speed records. My time is valuable, but I also don't want to waste time digging junk iron and trash. For me, it's worthwhile to take a few extra seconds to investigate the target - I feel it generally saves me time in the long run since I'm theoretically skipping enough junk digs to offset the extra seconds it takes to use my various techniques. I understand that for you, as a ring hunter, the priorities are different - you need to dig junk to get the gold, so beep, wiggle back, retrieve works great. Just different strokes for different folks.
