Tale of 3 wheaties — metal detecting tips

I’m no expert on metal detecting, but I’ve enjoyed the hobby for many years. I normally write about my adventures, but this article is going to be a little different. I’d like to spread a little knowledge…like I said I’m no expert, but I’ve noticed I find more when I follow these three rules:

  1. Slow down
  2. If your metal detector has an all-metal mode, use it.
  3. Dig everything and a site is never hunted out!

Tip #1 is the single most important metal detecting tip I can pass over to you. In fact, this is probably the single biggest mistake most metal detectorists (even the pros) make all the time. I know I make this mistake all the time! I even notice my self doing it and I continue to do it! It’s very, very frustrating! It’s just human nature to try and find out what’s in another area or to start going faster when we should start going slower! For instance, I had about an hour and half to work the 1906 farm. Mike, my dad and I have been to this site many, many times, but it’s a large farm, so there is no way it’s hunted out. I decided to try the above tips and see if I could pull any more old coins from this farm. Here are the my results:

Metal detecting finds — 1.5 hrs of metal detecting hunted-out 1906 farm house

As you can see, I didn’t find anything to write home about, but I managed to pull three more old coins from this yard! I did this by practicing my above three points. I slowed down, way down! In fact, I was just taking very small baby steps and overlapping my coil and swinging multiple times over each area. I was also working in all-metal mode which on the Garrett GTI 2500 is super sensitive! I did just one single strip in the front yard that has yielded many old coins including silver dimes and quarters in past hunts. I really didn’t think I would find this much! Just look at how many pull tabs I pulled out, every single one of them could have been a gold ring or gold jewelry! I even found three more old coins, they just happened to be wheat pennies, but my dad, my brother and I had missed them and if we missed these coins, we missed other old coins too! Like I said, I only did one small strip in the front yard. I also noticed as my time was running out, so did my patience! The last 15 minutes or so, I was rushing and my finds stopped dead!

I know it’s easy to “cherry pick” with modern detectors. They’re extremely reliable when it comes to target ID and it’s easy to just dig the “high” tones, but this is a mistake! Gold coins and gold jewelry are very easy to miss and will read anywhere from foil to zinc penny on the conductivity range and that’s a huge conductivity range! So tip #3 is almost as important as tip #1, but I think if you only get one thing from this article it should be slow down, slow down, slow down.

Thanks for reading and I hope to see you all out there getting the gold! Good luck!!!

Hello gold prospectors and miners!

My brother and I have been gold prospecting and gold mining since 1997, so we’re not experts but we have been doing it awhile! This website is dedicated to all amateur gold prospectors in the state of Georgia and across the U.S. We’ll be sharing our adventures in the world of amateur gold prospecting along with any history or historical information we can find to help you find more gold.