(Updated) How much stuff is mask?

Country Dirt Kid

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Erie Illinois
This time of year I am hunting fields before the crops go in. These places are all 1800's farms that are now flat empty fields. Of course there are thousands of square nails that have been randomized by 150 years of plowing. I got about 3 different permissions where I just don't find anything except aluminum from the highway and iron from the farm. Even with 0 disc I hardly ever find a hightone that will hit with 4 directional swings of the coil. Does anyone think that it would be beneficial to dig signals that only hit high tones in 2 directions? I have a feeling that when it comes to iron beds that I am not doing it right. I am hunting the the AT Pro. I did find a button from 1930's so there has got to be something else there. Its killing me thinking about it.
thanks
 
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Yes, I hunt same backyard and conditions as you, and i can tell you that with the simplex, it is not that often that i get a criss cross or x'ed( ie good in both directions) hi tone, in a field full off lots of trash.
And this seems to be multiplied/worse in worked ground, i think it has to do with the air gaps between clods, which messes with signal. So i cant say you will definitely find good things, but i have had very few absolute signals in the fields around here.

But if it is an clear unchanging tone, i dig it, it could be just can slaw or a grease tube lid, but it could also be something good mixed in with the trash.

If you know you are on a home-site, and not just a random "plow pulled the trash" spot, maybe use a smaller coil if you have one, will lose depth, but eh that doesn't bother me, its better than being overwhelmed with trashy signals.
 
Just thought i would add an example, of why i dig most signals with a good repeatable tone in it. The medallion/medal/token was a clippy hi tone that i almost talked myself out of because i had already recovered about 20 crushed pop cans that day, and it was in a chisel plowed trashy field, and my legs were just plain tired.

The pendant was actually found in yard, but i use this as an example for "gut feeling/intuition". Because of the hollow open work of it, it sounded like piece of small foil balled up(after you've found enough you will know, if you dont already),and forget about what vdi was showing lol.
But for some reason i kept swinging and digging(pin pointer had a hard time locating it as well).

It was just one of those times when i had a feeling i needed to keep looking.

P.S.Before someone asks, yes my daughter and i sat out there for over an hr with the wife's good colander(shh), sifting all the dirt within 2 ft radius for the missing stone.
 

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I'm sure it varies from location to location, but my experience has been that "masking" is very overrated. I say that from experience. 40+ years of swinging a detector, and I've learned, that if you know your detector, you can hunt with good discrimination and not leave much behind.

Our city park is a good example. I've hunted it with every detector I've owned, and I owned pretty much all the best, and I take the newest technology, like the Equinox 800, Deus, CTX, and find nothing more than I do with the Simplex. Just the occasional masked coin but nothing really old or deep. Now my E-Trac can still pull that silver from the depths and leave little behind.
 
I'm sure it varies from location to location, but my experience has been that "masking" is very overrated. I say that from experience. 40+ years of swinging a detector, and I've learned, that if you know your detector, you can hunt with good discrimination and not leave much behind.

Our city park is a good example. I've hunted it with every detector I've owned, and I owned pretty much all the best, and I take the newest technology, like the Equinox 800, Deus, CTX, and find nothing more than I do with the Simplex. Just the occasional masked coin but nothing really old or deep. Now my E-Trac can still pull that silver from the depths and leave little behind.

You should read the article "Beneath the Mask" by Tom Dankowski (NASA-Tom). You may question some of your conclusions.

http://dankowskidetectors.com/content/beneath-the-mask-content.shtml
 
Yes, I hunt same backyard and conditions as you, and i can tell you that with the simplex, it is not that often that i get a criss cross or x'ed( ie good in both directions) hi tone, in a field full off lots of trash.
And this seems to be multiplied/worse in worked ground, i think it has to do with the air gaps between clods, which messes with signal. So i cant say you will definitely find good things, but i have had very few absolute signals in the fields around here.

But if it is an clear unchanging tone, i dig it, it could be just can slaw or a grease tube lid, but it could also be something good mixed in with the trash.

If you know you are on a home-site, and not just a random "plow pulled the trash" spot, maybe use a smaller coil if you have one, will lose depth, but eh that doesn't bother me, its better than being overwhelmed with trashy signals.

What is said here about signals being “worse in worked ground” is absolutely correct, and something that needs to be considered. I have found the same, and even a silver dime in a clod in a very loose matrix can be VERY hard to detect. WHY? Not quite sure, it’s just what I’ve also experienced first hand.
 
This time of year I am hunting fields before the crops go in. These places are all 1800's farms that are now flat empty fields. Of course there are thousands of square nails that have been randomized by 150 years of plowing. I got about 3 different permissions where I just don't find anything except aluminum from the highway and iron from the farm. Even with 0 disc I hardly ever find a hightone that will hit with 4 directional swings of the coil. Does anyone think that it would be beneficial to dig signals that only hit high tones in 2 directions? I have a feeling that when it comes to iron beds that I am not doing it right. I am hunting the the AT Pro. I did find a button from 1930's so there has got to be something else there. Its killing me thinking about it.
thanks

You need a detector with higher recovery speed, like a Fisher, Teknetics,Nokta Makro,Minelab or Tesoro.
 
If I get a good signal - even 1 way - and the target isn't large, I dig it. Sometimes I dig the large targets too - just in case something nearby is being masked.

Happened just a few days ago. Smashed aluminum soda can down maybe 4 inches or so. I knew it was a can but dug it anyway. Swung the coil over the hole (after can was extracted) and got a signal that was less than 2 inches from one end of the flattened can. About 5-6 inches down was a silver dime. Just a Rosie, but still...

If you have a small coil for your ATPro, try that in the thicker trash areas. A friend uses the ATPro and the 5X8 coil - she has made a bunch of very nice finds in sites that are very much like yours.
 
Depends on what type of "masking" your talking about.

1. Dig a target and find a coin under it. It has never happened to me. Two years ago, I decided to do a test and dig any high tone all summer. Every coin i dug, I knew it was a coin by ID or tone. You get that feeling its a coin. All the other high tones I dug were junk. For coin shooting I use the CTX and have about 800 hours on it. Digging bad signals has never worked for me with the CTX. They all turn out to be trash. I'm better off not digging those signals and selective harvesting covering more ground.

2. The second "masking" is the fine surface trash that's chopped up by lawn mowers over the years. I know the places have deep coins. The problem is the detectors don't go very deep due to the surface micro trash. If you can find a coin at 6" your doing good.

If someone has advise on getting deeper in the surface micro trash I would appreciate it.
 
You should read the article "Beneath the Mask" by Tom Dankowski (NASA-Tom). You may question some of your conclusions.

http://dankowskidetectors.com/content/beneath-the-mask-content.shtml

Not a big fan of "NASA-Tom". I have nearly 50 years of swinging a detector, and that is where I draw my conclusions, not in the opinion of someone who doesn't walk in my shoes.

Yes, masking is real and you could be missing that single gold coin. I could also win the lottery if I played. I'm just saying I think masking is overplayed and as a result, can take the enjoyment out of detecting. Having confidence in your ability to cherry-pick is a far greater thing than digging a hole every 5" in hopes to find that $10k diamond ring, and leaving a site looking like a minefield just doesn't strike me as a wise thing to do. Call me crazy.

There are also times when masking is a concern. For me, those are few and far between. The wise detectorist knows when, and how much discrimination they should use. No one can tell you that.
 
I'm sure it varies from location to location, but my experience has been that "masking" is very overrated. I say that from experience. 40+ years of swinging a detector, and I've learned, that if you know your detector, you can hunt with good discrimination and not leave much behind.

Our city park is a good example. I've hunted it with every detector I've owned, and I owned pretty much all the best, and I take the newest technology, like the Equinox 800, Deus, CTX, and find nothing more than I do with the Simplex. Just the occasional masked coin but nothing really old or deep. Now my E-Trac can still pull that silver from the depths and leave little behind.

For you to say very little is left behind is wishful thinking on your part. How do you know what you are leaving behind? ... You don't know.
 
Yep.
You don’t know what you don’t know.

I don’t care if one has been detecting a hundred years.

Be nice if we could see into the ground wouldn’t it with our eyes.

Funny thing is.
What about the answer to this question if asked back in 1985.
Wonder what some folks would have been saying.
Oh I’ve Cleaned this site out. Nothing left.
Yeah. Right. Lol
And then comes Deus and bingo!! Or another model detector. And things shallower even found lurking.

Go back when Deus 1 was first released in USA. Yeah what were the sensible folks saying about it? After using it.
I know.
I was one of them.
 
For you to say very little is left behind is wishful thinking on your part. How do you know what you are leaving behind? ... You don't know.

Yes, I do. As I said, I speak from experience, not just my opinion. I have had many, and I invite anyone around, to come look over my cherry pickings and found nothing worth keeping but the few and far between keepers. Nothing I deem worth digging every signal for. But then we all have our accepted standards. Some are much lower than others.

All I have to do is go back over my cherry picked sites and dig it all to verify that I have yet to find anything that would have made taking the time and effort to dig it all would have been worthwhile. And yes I have done just that.

I have offered many to come to take the challenge and even had one. They went home with a buffalo nickel after 5 hours at the city park.

I know what I don't level behind by the people that hunt after me.

As I said, masking happens, I just don't think it is anywhere near what people like to imagine. Anyway, I have yet to see it. I have seen what isn't left behind.

Saying you don't know what you left behind is true. Just like saying I don't know if I would have won the lottery because I didn't play it. LOL

Now let me add, I just gave some bad advice to those new to detecting or a new detector. This cherry-picking is ONLY suggested for hunters like myself. Medical disabilities or time restraints do not allow much time for hunting. I have to make the very best of the time I have. That is why I make this suggestion. If you have the time and want, by all means, dig it all. I used to 20 years ago.
 
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Yes, I do. As I said, I speak from experience, not just my opinion. I have had many, and I invite anyone around, to come look over my cherry pickings and found nothing worth keeping but the few and far between keepers. Nothing I deem worth digging every signal for. But then we all have our accepted standards. Some are much lower than others.

All I have to do is go back over my cherry picked sites and dig it all to verify that I have yet to find anything that would have made taking the time and effort to dig it all would have been worthwhile. And yes I have done just that.

I have offered many to come to take the challenge and even had one. They went home with a buffalo nickel after 5 hours at the city park.

I know what I don't level behind by the people that hunt after me.

As I said, masking happens, I just don't think it is anywhere near what people like to imagine. Anyway, I have yet to see it. I have seen what isn't left behind.

Saying you don't know what you left behind is true. Just like saying I don't know if I would have won the lottery because I didn't play it. LOL

Now let me add, I just gave some bad advice to those new to detecting or a new detector. This cherry-picking is ONLY suggested for hunters like myself. Medical disabilities or time restraints do not allow much time for hunting. I have to make the very best of the time I have. That is why I make this suggestion. If you have the time and want, by all means, dig it all. I used to 20 years ago.

I think Graybeard is saying that there are goodies left behind that are masked in a way that no machine hears them. In that situation, there is no way to know what is left in the ground.
 
Yes, I do. As I said, I speak from experience, not just my opinion. I have had many, and I invite anyone around, to come look over my cherry pickings and found nothing worth keeping but the few and far between keepers. Nothing I deem worth digging every signal for. But then we all have our accepted standards. Some are much lower than others.

All I have to do is go back over my cherry picked sites and dig it all to verify that I have yet to find anything that would have made taking the time and effort to dig it all would have been worthwhile. And yes I have done just that.

I have offered many to come to take the challenge and even had one. They went home with a buffalo nickel after 5 hours at the city park.

I know what I don't level behind by the people that hunt after me.

As I said, masking happens, I just don't think it is anywhere near what people like to imagine. Anyway, I have yet to see it. I have seen what isn't left behind.

Saying you don't know what you left behind is true. Just like saying I don't know if I would have won the lottery because I didn't play it. LOL

Now let me add, I just gave some bad advice to those new to detecting or a new detector. This cherry-picking is ONLY suggested for hunters like myself. Medical disabilities or time restraints do not allow much time for hunting. I have to make the very best of the time I have. That is why I make this suggestion. If you have the time and want, by all means, dig it all. I used to 20 years ago.

Because you are satisfied with what you found proves nothing. I don't care what detector you use or who detected after you. You left targets in the ground.
The only way for you to claim nothing was left in the ground is for someone to dig the ground where you detected and sift it. That is the only way you will have any proof.
 
Besides, if you were confident that nothing was missed then why keep buying new detectors? Depth? Some have even argued that most goodies have been found at 6" or less. So by your theory there is no reason for the most part to be using any modern detector. If masking isn't an issue and depth needed is 6" then most any detector in the last 20 years could pull that off. Yet new detectors find things missed all the time.
 
Besides, if you were confident that nothing was missed then why keep buying new detectors? Depth? Some have even argued that most goodies have been found at 6" or less. So by your theory there is no reason for the most part to be using any modern detector. If masking isn't an issue and depth needed is 6" then most any detector in the last 20 years could pull that off. Yet new detectors find things missed all the time.

Most goodies at 6" or less were dug 50 years ago with then modern detectors.. And there was good stuff covering the ground back then.
 
Because you are satisfied with what you found proves nothing. I don't care what detector you use or who detected after you. You left targets in the ground.
The only way for you to claim nothing was left in the ground is for someone to dig the ground where you detected and sift it. That is the only way you will have any proof.

I made no claim that nothing was left behind. What I did say was that I left very little that would have been masked.

For anyone that has been hunting an area for a long time knows there is a process you go through. We have hunted many of these once great sites many times over the last half century. Some of the better ones probably 5-6 times. Yes, the first several hunts you tend to want to skip the junk and cherry-pick., but after you start running out of places to hunt you tend to drop your standards and start digging it all in hopes you get some of those masked targets. I base my conclusion on the lack of recoveries when we do a dig it all on these once cherry-picked sites.

What I find is that our cherry-picking was far more efficient than people give credit for. Even myself. That's all I'm saying is that in my experience, cherry-picking, when you know your detector, is far more effective than people tend to make it out to be.

One that defies all logic is a carnival site dating from the 1800s to the 1920s. We found it in the early 2000s and hunted it for three years with our DFXs until it finally stopped giving it up. Years later I felt surly with the new faster processors I could go back and pull lots of those masked coins as this site is littered with bottle caps. We have been back with all the new models including the Equinox 800 and not as much as a peep of a coin. We found many old Indian Heads, V-Nickles, Barbers, and wheats down to 5"-6" with our DFXs so surely we missed some? Not a single coin has been pulled from that site since we cleaned it with our DFXs. Blows my mind.

Let me leave you with a final thought. We see all these new videos of new detectors showing how it picks up a coin between nails. Same videos we've been seeing for 20 years. What we don't see are any videos of this masking. Where are the videos of these new detectors being taken out to well hunted great sites of the past, and now with all the unmasking old coins are popping up again? HUM? They don't exist because masking is overrated in my opinion, based on the lack of evidence. That is why I compare it to the lottery. Being able to say you can't win if you don't play, or, you don't know what is there unless you dig it all, have a lot in common. No matter how many times I play the lottery I have yet to win but the occasional scratch-off. When I did dig it all, I never managed to find all these "masked" goods just the occasional keeper.
 
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Hey Detector why only 5"--6" with the DFX...is that because soil conditions or the settings? I have been using the DFX for over 14 years and get better depth than that. I agree the DFX will not miss much with the right settings ... but also will not claim there is nothing left.
 
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