There is something good comes from almost everything and even though my little beach has been completely covered by hunters swinging coils summer and winter I have come to learn something of value by watching them. They each work like a mouse in a maze of his own. They walk in preprogrammed pathways and seldom vary from that. The funny thing is it is not the novices that do this but the old pros.
This goes on winter and summer and even though the beach is clean of all goodies for a while they still do not stray until they just give up and stay home. All of us can recall when we first ventured out there into all that area when we didn't know where to go or much less how to hunt. The strange thing is that we all seem to hold those first finds in a picture in our mind and we turn on our detector and try to repeat the process.
Treasure of course can be scattered all over the place but we all have our favorite paths we work over and over somehow thinking a better detector might help. We find comfort in our well known footpaths and even though our finds may drop considerably we still plod along.
This is not the only thing the old pro's do. They generally set their machine when they get to the hunting area and just leave it in one position without adjustment for time after time. How many of us hunted a long while only to discover that a knob had accidentally been turned and we did not even check it out!
Another bad habit is that after learning all the things that you should not do then they tend to forget and one of the first things to go is how they should swing the coil. The worst thing I see is someone walking hunched over and swinging the coil back and forth between their feet! This was not a novice either. The other thing I see a lot is that tall guys just never learn to use a rod extension or just to pull the rod out all the way. You should have your wrist at least a foot from your belt as you swing the coil and they get tired and make such tiny sweeps that they could never find anything. I catch myself from time to time passing the coil from one side to the other and then continuing behind my back(bad!) I swing a 8 foot path and do it quickly(a second or less) if I am scanning for a new patch of coins(I slow way down when I find them). It makes no sense to sweep a pattern if you are not finding anything. I also see them swing the coil like a pendulum. To find the deep things you will have to hold the coil level and very close to the ground and then find out what sweep speed your detector can handle. I tend to get a signal by swinging fast that won't show up if I move slow.
The new hunters have to learn of course where to find the best goodie's and as they move far afield they may just stumble onto one of the best finds that the pros have never found. They have not accepted a preset hunting program and do not follow old footpaths. The biggest problem of the new hunter is their very first time they go hunting they find the most over hunted trashy park that it is possible to find which leads them to have a very disappointing first experience. I recall my first trip to the park and walking around staring intently at the target ID meter just waiting for a silver dollar to pop up I guess. After hunting for a long, long time, I finally triumphed with one new zinc penny. That was my first experience!
We all need to include new places to hunt and new ways to hunt our older spots and we should never stop learning our detector. I seem to learn something new almost every trip lately. I have been hunting much of the older spots but using new techniques to hunt far deeper than before. Also I have spent considerable time analyzing all the sounds we get when we think its just another rusty chunk of iron. I have come to realize that I was very wrong by just discriminating it out all this time! Now I can tell if it is really iron, rust deposits, or out of ID range goodies. This morning I found a zinc penny at 15 inches deep. You have to pay attention to the nulling effects in autotune, to the target profile, and to signal abnormalities. For instance you can be fooled easily by nothing more than shallow rust which may show up as a deep object. My point by digressing is to bring out that you should be expanding your experience and not just repeating the footfalls of a once good find.
When the goodies play out and you still feel like returning once more then use the trip to learn more about your machine. Learn about iron, don't despise it! Play a game with yourself the next time you go there. Find what you think is an out of range target or iron and take ten minutes to play with this signal in various modes and then when you think you have figured it out take the time to dig it and before long you will be astounding your friends and yourself!
