Unless I go to my kids' school - where I can dig up a couple bucks in change pretty quick - I only seem to find large pieces of iron when my AT Pro rings up in the 80s and higher.
I know I have to get better at 'reading' my AT's signals, but I can't differentiate between what might be a big piece of aluminum or steel as opposed to having a piece of iron AND silver coin next to each other. Very frustrating.
I do try to swing over it in different directions and sometimes I lose the high tone - and move on - but often it's still there, so I dig.
My finds bag is getting heavy. I need a sherpa.
You need more use.
And do some testing with coins buried.
Size of target, it will be learned with time. Use of pinpoint, coil height raising, sweeping from different directions, tonal behavior on different angles of sweeps.
Another trick is (if you are in a place where you can use a shovel) is too put shovel in the ground say 6-7” and not lift up all the way to dig hole, just lift up a little to shift the ground matrix/iron you might be hearing in your detector. Many times after this shifting the high tone will go away when you sweep. (If iron)
Some times you can actually stomp on the spot on ground real hard and cause this shift.
You can’t do adequate testing using your detector after freshly burying iron. This won’t cause what you will see/hear while detecting in the wild.
Tonal nuance is paramount to get good at listening for to be an above average detectorist. Not all iron will sound the same way. Not all nonferrous even silver coins will sound the exaclty same way. But ferrous under your coil is odds on favorite for not sounding repetitive as far as what you will hear with controlled height and speed sweeps of your coil. As you sweep iron it will generally tonally will be altered somewhat. If you will bear down and listen carefully you’ll start to hear. Flat bigger iron tone is usually more short and blurty sounding (signal has no smoother rise and fall on edges) vs how a coin say will sound. Listen for the entire tonal spectrum given you. Don’t think of the tone as just a BEEP.
No matter how well one is at detecting, some iron will be dug with any VLF detector. Comes with the territory.
A good sign you are starting to really catch on with your detector is....if you are digging iron rings, nails that resemble fence staples shape wise. These if you aren’t digging then you likely aren’t infact not paying attention and are leaving perhaps some nice finds innthe ground.
My recommendation. Go to an old site with loads of iron. And sweep around in and listen. Rmember thereis high chance there’s always more iron and nails than there are nonferrous targets. By doing this you can listen and get a good look on what a lot of different sized iron and nails sounds like. By all means dig some of the iron and have an actual look see. And notice some of it when dug and place on top of the ground and swept won’t sound the same as before you dug.
Being to able to place good odds on iron when detecting saves you a lot of time. Time for you to actually get over a nonferous target.
Seems most folks like the pro zero mode using At Pro. I don’t have one. VLF detectors, all can alert on iron in one fashion or the other.
Good luck.
Hunting easy sites all the time will not greatly improve your detecting skills.
You must crawl before you can walk, and walk before you can run.
I find it takes about 100 hours of actual in the wild use of a detector new or strange to me to be what I call somewhat proficient with. More hours past the 100 hour mark I am really drilling down with detector. The 100 hours is spent in what I consider challenging sites, be it higher trash and or iron.
Cheers.