I'm a newbie, been out hunting 5 times. All parks or schools. Every place I've gone, there is a target (anywhere from 20-95 on the AT Pro) about every three feet of walking, on average. I feel like it would take me forever to dig up all the targets in any given area. I've found many coins and some other cool cool objects, but it sure is tiresome digging up pop tops and bottle caps.
Is this a normal scenario at a park? Can I manipulate my machine to avoid these frustrating targets?
Cracks me up...1 target every 3 feet.
Try hunting sites with pieces of metal within inches of each other...everywhere.
Here is the junk from one site for one hunt when I was first trying out a new DD coil.
I don't do this anymore, don't need to because I learned ways to avoid digging most of that trash.
Experience will help you too, 5 hunts does not an experienced hunter make but we all get better at this stuff over time.
In an effort to help let me give you some advice about dealing with those pop tops.
You use an AT Pro, that one has a DD coil coil and it is pretty easy to ID and avoid most of these that you come across once you learn a few things.
Digging everything when you are new is recommended, it is the best way to learn so you need some patience in this hobby while learning but eventually you want to avoid as much trash as you can but still not miss the better targets.
Many deal with pop tops in different ways, depending on the detector you use there might be specific techniques and sometimes distinct "tells" in the audio or behavior using some models that makes dealing with these things quick and easy.
Then there are techniques that are common to and work pretty well on most detectors of any type or brand.
A few of these below.
I pulled my reply from another thread where a new hunter was having issues with pop tops.
The technique I usually use when hunting in pop top infested sites with DD coils is something called wiggle and pull back...it is the same method I use to pinpoint targets without using the pinpointer.
Get a target and use some quick, short side to side swipes to get it under the center of the coil.
Many pop tops will mimic high tone coins.
Keep swinging over the target and begging pulling back the coil keeping the target in the center area.
As the target passes by the front rim of the coil it will drop out so that is where you need to dig.
When dealing with pop tops one more thing will happen before the signal drops out...the tone and numbers will drop low, sometimes to the foil to nickel area but most times all the way down to iron.
If you hunt with high disc this effect will not be noticed.
A few other ways to get that drop is raise the coil higher while swinging over it, rimming either side edge of the coil over the area and some even place middle of the front or back edge of the coil over the target and slide the center part of the coil over it...that drop should still happen.
Over coins, rings and other good targets you will not get this noticeable drop.
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As far as pop tops...they are my arch enemy.
I hate them, so many of my sites are awash in a huge number of these things at some of my older parks and many of those sites have a huge amount of good high tone targets I want to dig so a blanket of these things at different depths really slows me down.
Using concentric coils they are fairly easy to spot, the numbers aren't usually coin numbers at all and usually jumpy.
When I switch to a DD coil that changes and the numbers come way closer if not right on dime and quarter numbers a lot...even into some pretty solid 90's numbers from time to time.
I have divided these up into a few categories because this is the different kinds of behavior I have seen and this is how I deal with each of them.
Always looking for a fast and efficient way to recognize them and avoid digging them with no "what if" feelings in the back of my mind and these techniques seems to be working for me pretty well so far.
These things are made of different materials depending on age and manufacturer, and exactly how they are laying in the ground seems to affect the way our detectors see them and behave.
1. The jumpy ones...These might come in at all numbers from the 60's to the 90's and even mimic coin number areas but no matter how I move the coil over them they jump in the numbers more than 2 or 3 and even sections a lot of the time.
Raising the coil over them while swinging will usually show a dramatic number drop also, and "rimming" the target running the edge of the coil over them, any edge but I use the front, you will see a big drop in the numbers and sometimes even down to iron just about every time.
2. Stable ones...Sometimes the numbers are pretty right on where coins fall, the numbers don't hardly jump at all which is the case with most coins.
I don't do that coil raising thing much in any of these situations because that rimming thing usually is faster for me.
On these types a few quick swipes with the rim of the coil and a number drop and I just move on confident I have not left a good target in the ground.
3...The ones that fool you...Some of the older steel ones that are rusty and flattened and especially laying flat in the ground will just come in like a coin at good numbers with no change in the numbers, sections or tones by raising the coil or rimming.
Quick side to side swipes they might also stay very solid and stable and in this case you just have to dig them and see what they are hoping for a good target.
Luckily, these are the rarest type I come across...they are out there but not in the huge volume of the other types.
A few of the modern crimped aluminum ones could act this way especially if they are flattened, but most times they fall into one of those first two categories.
There might be other clues to differentiate the more difficult ones and tell me they are trash and not good targets, but if there is a technique for doing that I don't know it yet...so I dig them.