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Use some notching when inland hunting for gold rings? Crazy???

Diga

Elite Member
Joined
Mar 22, 2022
Messages
2,489
Hi everyone.

I normally hunt for gold rings in the water, but a few months ago, I wrote a post about hunting for gold rings in city parks. Despite really giving it a good go, I gave it up, because for me, the amount of foil and tabs I had to dig, wasn't worth my time, effort, and especially my failing knees.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post about the oldest park in my city, that has been extensively used for sports, festivals, fairs, etc, since the late 1800's. The park is 2 city blocks square, but has since been taken over by addicts. I desperately wanted to hunt it, but of course, was concerned about my safety. I ended up putting on a yellow and red city workers vest, and hunted it for about 2 hours on a Sunday. Despite there being about 100 addicts in the small park, they didn't bother or try to harass me at all. According to the park security that I spoke with, it was because of the vest. Anyway, it turns out that this park is watered every night, so the plug digging is easy. But, the most appealing aspect, is this park, by far, has way more gold than any other park I’ve hunted, and even more gold than any in water swim site I’ve hunted. I hunted it again last Sunday for about 3 hours, and was just as successful with the bling. Why is there so much bling in this park? Well, these addicts are well known for break and enters and theft. Since they spend most of their time in this park, I’m guessing that’s the source.

The problem is, I still have to dig a lot foil and tabs, and my knees are really starting to feel it. As such, I need to make every retrieval count. So, it got me thinking about notching out small to mid sized foil, the upper coin range, and even possibly notching out 1 or 2 bins for the tabs. Granted, I will lose some gold rings with this notching, but I’m also suspecting that the massive amount of time I’ll save by not digging those signals, means more time swinging and digging the much better gold ring signal range.

What do you all think of that kind of notching for this particular site, and to save my knees?
 
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In the USA, what you are describing is a real problem when gold jewelry hunting especially if the detector user's body is anything like mine......wearing out fast.

Most of the time, my goal is to dig 80 to 100 targets in 2 to 3 hours at a site like you are describing. I will pick a likely target area, hunt it first wide open with no notching, and get the easy stuff that has solid gold numbers 14 to 40 or so and sounds good. Afterwards I hunt the same area but with site specific numbers notched out so I may end up with a little iron for reference in the 5 to 8 range along with 14 to 19 accepted, 23 to 25 accepted and 30 to 38 accepted and dig all of those targets that sound good. If I have time I may hit the other previously rejected gold numbers or save them for another trip to the same spot. I also often hunt with notches and with Pitch tones for better audio responses.

This way, I get all of the easy clad/silver jewelry drops on the first sweep using 6 tones, concentrate on the most common gold numbers that also don't have a ton of aluminum trash doubling as gold on the second sweep and I can choose to dig or not dig based on how good the target sounds without having to hear everything in the ground. I have not noticed any significant depth loss from employing notching on the Legend so far. The same technique works well with Deus 2 since it also has Pitch tones.
 
Targeting gold rings in parks is an exercise in futility. They just happen from time to time.

Steve
 
I will pick a likely target area, hunt it first wide open with no notching, and get the easy stuff that has solid gold numbers 14 to 40 or so and sounds good.

Thanks Jeff :)

That's exactly what I was going to ignore for the high end numbers on the Legend, but the nonferrous range from 11 to around 20 is my concern. Out of the countless targets I dug up in that range, it was all foil or other trash, except for one thin and tiny 10 kt gold ring. I'll start with ignoring the 40+ as you mentioned, but also ignore 11 to 20, and see what happens with that.

Pulltabs generally hit at 27 in my ground, with the 6" coil on M2. So, I was thinking of notching out 27 as well. This should be fine for the tabs laying flat, but when they're on edge, they come up varied and much lower. I'm just going to have to live with that.

Aside from my knee issues, the other issue is the type of people in this site. Although I haven't had any problems with them, I still want to keep my head up and watching my surroundings. As such, I want to avoid having to hear the detector, and avoid looking at the TID as much as possible. That's why instead of using tone breaks, or lowering the volume for unwanted targets, I'm notching them right out.
 
Actually, I do quite well in notching trash and still hitting rings in trashy parks.

A detector with more than 50 target ID segments is essential. The 100 TIDSs on my Simplex do a fair job. Hunting mainly tot lots for years has helped in knowing the TDI of most normal trash, foil, canslaw pull tab, but there is no 100%. I do think I can get close to 80% which I can live with.

The tightness of VDI, and VDI numbering, to some extent, are my indicators. I have found, by tot lots, a VDI in the 20s is almost always a piece of foil. Yes, gold can read a VDI in the 20s, but everything I've found & tested never has. It is either in the teens or 30s+.

Also, in the majority of cases, a piece of gold will have a 2-4 number stretch in the VDI, not the 4-7- of a piece of canslaw. Pull tabs end up with generally 2 VDI areas. One for the older pull tabs, a bit higher, and one for the new aluminum tabs, which reads right with the nickles in most cases. A 24-25 on the Simplex. My key for pull tabs is different numbers when hit from a different direction.

Again, not 100% by any stretch, but it does increase my odds. I am known for finding a lot of rings for a dirt digger, and that is the reason why.
 
Targeting gold rings in parks is an exercise in futility.

Steve

Yes, that is the common perception when it comes to finding gold rings, but I'm not so sure that it's 100% correct.

In my experience, and what I've learned from others, is that most gold rings are in the 20's and lower 30's on the Legend.

Also, if I'm targeting gold rings, why would I waste massive amounts of time digging around the 40+ silver range? And why would I waste my time digging the low teens which is almost always foil? Why wouldn't I concentrate on the 20's and lower 30's instead?
 
Actually, I do quite well in notching trash and still hitting rings in trashy parks.

A detector with more than 50 target ID segments is essential. The 100 TIDSs on my Simplex do a fair job. Hunting mainly tot lots for years has helped in knowing the TDI of most normal trash, foil, canslaw pull tab, but there is no 100%. I do think I can get close to 80% which I can live with.

I can live with that 80% as well, because that 80% also means far less wear and tear on the knees, and more time digging the TID's that have a much better chance at being a gold ring.
 
I can live with that 80% as well, because that 80% also means far less wear and tear on the knees, and more time digging the TID's that have a much better chance at being a gold ring.

The hardest thing for me to adapt to was trusting my formula. I would find it hard to pass up a signal that didn't meet my specifics and spend the time to recover, only to find I should have trusted my formula.

Even today I still find myself slipping from my formula when hunting with my E-Trac, and have yet to find the formula wrong. On the E-Trac I run with just a notch for the bottom end ferrous, and a top notch line for that pesky iron falsing. Everything else is wide open I rely completely on the VDI.
 
The hardest thing for me to adapt to was trusting my formula. I would find it hard to pass up a signal that didn't meet my specifics and spend the time to recover, only to find I should have trusted my formula.

Ha ha. Me too. On almost all targets, I've learned to trust my VDI.

You wouldn't believe how many times I've read, "You have to dig the 11's on the Legend", because it could be a gold ring. Incidentally, 11 on the Legend is one number up from the ferrous range. Anyway, the only thing I've ever dug that was an 11, was foil...and a sh-t ton of it lol. Sure, some very small gold can come in at 11, but I sure the heck am not going to waste time and effort digging up a small mountain of foil, to maybe find that rare tiny ring that comes in at 11.
 
So far, I have 5 gold rings found with the Legend. One was a mans wedding band and was a 30 VDI. The other 4 were all smaller women's rings that were at or under 2 grams of gold in weight. All four had VDIs between 14 and 18.....so I personally would not reject 14 to say 19 unless the trash levels in that target ID zone were unbearable.
 
So far, I have 5 gold rings found with the Legend. One was a mans wedding band and was a 30 VDI. The other 4 were all smaller women's rings that were at or under 2 grams of gold in weight. All four had VDIs between 14 and 18.....so I personally would not reject 14 to say 19 unless the trash levels in that target ID zone were unbearable.

Ya, I'm beginning to question notching out the high teens, so I might keep those. I'll see how it goes again, but this park is filled with foil. I'm definitely not going to dig under 14 though, and especially not 11's!!! :D

What do you think about notching out 1 or 2 bins for the pulltabs, as I mentioned previously?
 
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Ya, I'm beginning to question notching out the high teens, so I might keep those. I'll see how it goes again, but this park is filled with foil. I'm definitely not going to dig under 14 though, and especially not 11's!!! :D

What do you think about notching out 1 or 2 bins for the pulltabs, as I mentioned previously?

That's up to you and the sites your are hunting as far as what to notch out for pull tabs.
 
That's up to you and the sites your are hunting as far as what to notch out for pull tabs.

I'll need more experience at this site, especially given that I've only been hunting in one small corner of it.

Thanks for the interaction and suggestions!
 
I have around 40 parks I hunt locally during each year. I figure any target removed is one less target that might be partially masking something even better. If I need to use some notch just to hunt the site due to there being thousands of targets even in a small area, why not. I know I am walking right over potentially good targets, but there is no way I can physically dig them all and the Parks and Rec grounds keeping staff would go nuts if I did. If it will help me find a gold ring here and there and I put some trash where its is supposed to be instead of on the ground from littering....great.
 
I found the following image on a Legend Facebook page. So ya, it seems as though if I ignore around the 13 and under foil range, and around the 40 and up coin range, should get most of the rings while avoiding a lot of digging for targets that I don't want.

rings.jpg
 
I found the following image on a Legend Facebook page. So ya, it seems as though if I ignore around the 13 and under foil range, and around the 40 and up coin range, should get most of the rings while avoiding a lot of digging for targets that I don't want.

View attachment 505980


That is my photo.

I did not put it on Facebook but its all good.

That photo clearly shows why rejecting 14 to 19 on the Legend for gold jewelry hunting is a bad idea. Same for 22 to 25 maybe 26. It all depends on where the modern oval pull tabs come in at for your ground conditions and frequency scan settings. I only included regularly occurring aluminum targets along with a very common number for some steel alloy crown bottle caps in that photo. Aluminum foil and canslaw can happen anywhere on that scale. No control over that.
 
That is my photo.

I did not put it on Facebook but its all good.

Well that was quite the coincidence :)

I'll go with the notching as outlined in my previous post, but more and more, it doesn't look like trying to avoid the pulltabs is a good idea. That's ok though, because with that notching, I'll still avoid a lot of needless bending and digging.
 
I found the following image on a Legend Facebook page. So ya, it seems as though if I ignore around the 13 and under foil range, and around the 40 and up coin range, should get most of the rings while avoiding a lot of digging for targets that I don't want.

View attachment 505980

Looks very similar to the Makro Simplex+ as well. Good info. I might open up some mid 20s. I just have never to date found any gold that came in with a 20s VDI.
 
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