Need advice dealing with cans.

Country Dirt Kid

Elite Member
Joined
Feb 20, 2016
Messages
625
Location
Erie Illinois
I'm got permission to hunt an 1860's one room school. The building is still there you can still see the bell tower. The problem is the place is a cleaned up former junk yard. I have never dug so much aluminum in my life. There are so many shredded beer cans that its almost undetectable. Some of the cans are 10 inches down. I detected for 3 hours and found zilch that wasn't aluminum. Is there anything I can do? This is a once in lifetime opportunity
. To make matters worse the owner tells me that I am about the 10th guy to detect this place. I want to find something from the school not beer cans.
What would you folks do in this situation? thanks
 
Years ago the "cans" were two little out buildings then the event of modern pluming happened. When you dig those school yard cans, be careful not to get anything on you:)
 
I’m using at pro stock coil. It looks like at one time someone had a aluminum can bin the spilled out and then someone with a bush hog chopped them up in tall grass. The cans have been shredded and reshredded by various lawn movers until now. I understand how to hunt iron but that’s not the problem this time. I wonder If I can discriminate all high tones just to find brass or something like that.
 
No matter your machine or its settings I don't think your going to be able to unmask totally the aluminum hiding the good stuff. The tech just isn't there for that it seems. However with that said a higher frequency may help some, say 54 or higher. But if your using an ATP that option isn't there (I have one). That leaves basically two options. Dig it all or none of it. Just my opinion though.
 
use a small coil and try to dig the high target ID or tones. I went to a place like that one time by a set of rail road tracks. I did not have a small coil. I never went back. That was years ago and I got frustrated like you are. Remember a beer can should still register a lower target ID number than a dime would. Also the target size when pin pointing will be larger on a beer can or at least 1/2 of a beer can than a coin would.

The smaller can slaw stuff will be lower conductors than a zinc penny too. At least some should be. I would notch out everything below a copper penny and see what happens. Worth a try anyways........or do a section at a time and dig everything in a 10 foot square area and when thats done grid off another area and do the same thing.

good luck!!
 
You found detector hell.:lol:
Yeah maybe notch off high tones and dig lower ones?
I will raise my coil up about 6 inches and if it still sounds off it's a large object(can).
 
A friend and I encountered something similar in the yard of a really old house we had a limited amount of time to detect on. We gridded off an area and just made a trash cleanup pass. We dug everything (found some stuff too). Then came back a time or two after and found some deeper coins. It was a lot of work, but I think that might be the only solution for some sites.
 
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