IF YOU DO NOT DIG TRASH......

[60streeter]

YOU WILL NEVER KNOW IF ANYTHING IS HIDING BENEATH IT.

 

[sube]

YOU WILL NEVER KNOW IF ANYTHING IS HIDING BENEATH IT.

More thrash But seriously this comes into play on sites that have potential parks and fairgrounds I will dig thrash but only the boomers been rewarded many times and skunk just as many .
If I had a site that had potential which there are very few where I live I would dig more .
Some sites a shifter would be the weapon of choice .
I do envy your local . sube

 

[CW3]

This can go both ways.

Just think of all the silver you will never get to by digging all that trash.

 

[Lodge Scent]

Same with iron. Especially at a "pounded" site. Most all the nonferrous targets that are left are masked by iron. You have to dig those iffy signals. If you get too fussy, you will definitely leave good stuff in the ground.......which is fine with me.

 

[LovestheShiny!]

Depends on your site and what you are looking for. Depends on how you define "trash." Say a person was hunting a Civil War skirmish or battle area with no modern activity, then very little would be trash as both ferrous and non ferrous would likely be desirable items.

My detecting goals are to find silver coins, jewelry, tokens, clad, and copper targets, along with nickels. So I tend to ignore trash signals like iron, nails, bottle caps, balls of foil, most pull tabs, and zincolns. I detect private yards primarily, and other than roofing nails and the odd pull tab, they are relatively trash free and I can focus on just digging targets of choice.

While I don't detect parks and other public places like fairgrounds, I would think the sheer volume of junk in the ground would make digging every signal time consuming and really discouraging.

 

[hoser]

I do dig a lot of trash. A lot of the time I will dig if there is a mixed signal bouncing back and forth between ferrous Yeah most of the time it turns out to be trash and there isn't another sweeter signal under it. The ones I hate are the rusty bolts that actually have a good coin sound. I recheck and nothing there.

 

[too_pointer]

Trash sometimes has the "halo effect , but I agree, dig it !
too_

 

[MasonDixonMding]

The sites I prefer to hunt are old sites in a open field. In sites like these I dig everything but iron. If I’m hunting a existing home I will start digging every signal, but after a lot of trash comes out of the ground I will pass on most of the low signals. Depending on the site I may start passing on some mid tones if there’s a extreme amount of trash. I don’t like digging lots of holes in someone’s yard. I’ve had some sites in a field next to a road. If there’s a lot of trash next to the road. I will leave that area next to the road for last.

I love digging everything. Some of my best finds ever where mid and low tones. For me each site dictates what I dig.

 

[davemill]

For me each site dictates what I dig.

Yes yes yes. Dig the first 5-10 point targets at every site to understand the soil conditions.

Recently dug the dime in my profile at a local eucalyptus grove. Eucalyptus is an invasive tree planted widely in this area after the Redwoods were clear cut in the 1880's-1930's. In a Eucalyptus grove, the soil is invariably dry and crumbly and dead. Walk 20 yards to where some native plants are growing, you'll find rich black soil with earthworms and moisture. The matrix surrounding a target is entirely different in these two cases. Sometimes there isn't even any rust cloud around iron in a eucalyptus grove. Weird and sad.

 

[SirDigsALOT!]

I have a school I detect that opened in 1918. It was the original high school, but now is a middle school. The front of the building has been untouched based on maps I look at and the fact that there's crazy targets is promising. When I first ran the metal detector on it holy crap massive targets everywhere. This summer I cleaned out about every high tone less than 4", but a few dimes and copper pennies at 6". The soil is very fertile and being on the North side of the school it's also very easy to make small plugs to pop out coins, rings, and whatnot.

There are many deeper targets, but I don't want to dig that deep without permission. Next summer I plan to weed out more trash to see what's left lol. Based on what I've found this place has never been detected.

 

[60streeter]

This can go both ways.

Just think of all the silver you will never get to by digging all that trash.

How? If you remove the trash those signals are far more evident. Patience and persistence is key!

 

[Rattlehead]

How? If you remove the trash those signals are far more evident. Patience and persistence is key!

He means you have to consider how many good signals you could’ve dug up elsewhere with all the time lost on digging those iffy/trashy signals at a mostly hunted out site. Game of odds.

 

[IDXMonster]

It’s heavily dependent on where you are, what you might find there, what you HAVE found there….I’ve never purposely dug an iron signal at a fairground in hopes there was a coin under there, but it completely depends on what you are looking for and where. Getting a big piece of sheet roofing out of the way which would open up 30 square feet around a 1700’s house? Sure, I can see it. Digging singular nail signals out of a fairground which has tens of thousands of nails? Of course not. It very much is all relative to WHAT you hunt and WHERE you hunt it.

 

[BobOso]

I dig a little bit of trash, depending on where I am at, or when my back says slow down. I like parks, I find most of my jewelry there, but many are trashy, so I try not to dig much trash. Then come my ghost towns and mining camps, I do not care for relics, so I knock out iron, these places are seasonal and hard to get to, never found clad there.

 

[Cherry Picker]

But, at what point does your time spent recovering trash for the possibility of something good, become time that could have been more productive with better odds? If you have nothing but time that is great. Myself, I have to make the time I have count, and recovering trash is the last thing I want to spend time on. Hence my name Cherry Picker.

 

[Diga]

In old sites with little to no modern trash, I dig all nonferrous targets. If it's extremely productive on the old coins, and I've dug all the nonferrous targets, I'll start digging the iron signals that max out the depth meter. Reason being, if deep enough, all nonferrous targets will identify as ferrous.

My gold hunting is typically in the water, and I've almost given up looking for gold jewelry in nonferrous trashy sites, like parks, etc. I have a very low trash tolerance. With that said, come next spring, I'm going to give it a go again. I'll be notching out the foil range, because after digging hundreds of targets in that range, not one has been gold. Granted, small gold can fall into the foil range, but for me, the odds aren't good enough to warrant my time, and especially my effort. That time is better spent digging numbers that have a higher chance of being gold. So, I'll be ignoring the foil range, as well as ignoring zinc and higher. If I include zinc and higher, then just about all my time and effort would be wasted by digging endless clad.

 

[Xxray]

YOU WILL NEVER KNOW IF ANYTHING IS HIDING BENEATH IT.

Or care ?

 

[CW3]

But, at what point does your time spent recovering trash for the possibility of something good, become time that could have been more productive with better odds? If you have nothing but time that is great. Myself, I have to make the time I have count, and recovering trash is the last thing I want to spend time on. Hence my name Cherry Picker.

Exactly

 

[sube]

Digalicious said​

I'll start digging the iron signals that max out the depth meter. Reason being, if deep enough, all nonferrous targets will identify as ferrous.

The only thing I have to say to that is good luck .
All small iron will max out the depth meter would work if there were not small targets but that's not reality small non-ferrous and ferrous well do the same max out the depth meter but are really shallow . sube

 

[Diga]

Digalicious said​

I'll start digging the iron signals that max out the depth meter. Reason being, if deep enough, all nonferrous targets will identify as ferrous.

The only thing I have to say to that is good luck .
All small iron will max out the depth meter would work if there were not small targets but that's not reality small non-ferrous and ferrous well do the same max out the depth meter but are really shallow . sube

Note that I preceded that by saying: "If it's extremely productive on the old coins, and I've dug all the nonferrous targets".

An example of where I used that method, was a fair grounds that dated back to right around 1910. An area about 50' by a few hundred feet, was dug out to a depth of around 8". There was little to no nonferrous trash, and about the only ferrous trash was larger size nails with the occasional nut and bolt thrown in. One end of that strip was full of silvers. In a fairly short amount of time, I dug up 37 silvers (mostly dimes) dating from 1902 to around 1920. Just about every nonferrous signal was a silver coin. It was a dream site, that I'll probably never encounter again. Anyway, once I cleared it of all the nonferrous signals, is when I used the method I described. I'd say about 1 in 5 of the deep ferrous signals were silvers. I didn't have a heck a lot of time to experiment any further, because I was in area that I wasn't "technically" supposed to be in, and I got caught around that time.