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Beach Hunting
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reading the beach
water hunting with the explorer
who dares wins
water 3
formulate a plan
mineralization

How To Clean Up On The Beach

Earlier this week, I did an outing to a small, Northwest Indiana beach which has always been a good producer for me. It has given up its share of clads and gold rings, and because it’s an inland lake, the water’s pretty warm during the summer, which makes for a little added enjoyment. It has seen some hunting pressure over the years, mainly from a guy in the neighborhood who liked to do his detecting while diving. The guy apparently moved on some time ago, leaving some good pickings because there aren’t a lot of detectorists in my neck of the woods, and this little beach isn’t exactly a major detecting destination.

However, this summer is bringing out more people in my area who apparently were good little boys and girls and got metal detectors last Christmas. It seemed like wherever I went this week, there were detectorists out before me, which was an extreme rarity up until now. I’m not exactly what you’d call an early riser, so I expect these things to happen. The only difference is it’s happening more and more this year. Maybe it’s just time for me to invest in an alarm clock. For all I know, metal detecting is quietly on a bigger rise as a serious hobby than we would think, and before we all know it, the whole damn world will be walking around waving a coil. I was around when CB radio went from obscurity to being The Next Huge Thing when every radio station in America was playing "Convoy" by C.W. McCall somewhere around 1977, so trust me when I say a metal detector in every pot wouldn’t be a pretty thing indeed. On the bright side, at least someone can’t tack on a 500 watt linear amplifier onto a metal detector and screw up your TV reception.

So here I was, at my favorite beach, getting my gear together. My car’s clock said it was 2:30pm, which for me is as fine an hour of the day as any to do some beach detecting. As I walked onto the swimming area, the lifeguard supervisor approached me.

"Do you find a lot out here with that thing?" he asked.

"I do okay. I find a lot of pennies and dimes out here. Beats sitting at home watching TV, at any rate."

"Well, there were two other guys just out here," he said. "There were here all day. They got here in the morning and left a little while ago."

"That’s OK," I said nonchalantly. "Doesn’t bother me."

The fellow looked at me with a sense of bemusement, I think, because he probably expected me to mutter a few choice words and pack up my stuff and go home. But I didn’t. Want to know why? Not because I paid $2 for parking. It was because unless I’ve just arrived after a club hunt, following up a detectorist or two really doesn't bother me.

And it shouldn’t bother you, either, because the odds of finding goodies are still greatly in your favor. That is, if you continually train yourself to be a better hunter than the other guy. You’ve got to hunt better, slower, more carefully, and listen more closely to what’s in your headphones than those before you. Do that and if there’s anything to be found in a lake, you’ll come across it. A good bit of it will likely be junk jewelry (especially if you follow those detectorists who keep the good stuff and chuck the rest where they find it), but in this hobby, you have an even-odds shot that those same junk targets could be gold or silver, too. Miss one thing and you’ll miss another. And that's a fact, Jack.

These fellows indeed did hit the beach pretty hard, judging from the number of holes I waded through during my four-hour hunt, so I didn’t expect a quantity sort of day by any means. However, they wouldn’t qualify for the title of detecting’s great white hope, either, because I was recovering objects near their holes they should have recovered if they detected the shallows as carefully as they could or should have. My finds amounted to three items of kid’s junk jewelry (a small, encrusted crucifix studded with 12 rhinestones, a gold plated ring with some of the plating left on it, and a gold plated heart-shaped earring from Avon with the plating intact), an encrusted metal toy jack, a silver-colored button (aluminum or steel plated, most likely), and 45 cents in clads.

Junk items, to be sure, but as everyone in this hobby knows, what's under your coil can be something valuable as much as it can be junk. I was firmly convinced there was a gold or silver ring to be found, but I ran out of time before I was able to thoroughly hunt the wet sand area where the water meets the shore, which is typically one of the hottest spots on a beach for rings.

These guys also totally missed 42 cents worth of clads (three dimes, a nickel and seven Lincolns) closely concentrated in a one-foot circle, as if someone sat down and spilled their pockets. Unless the other guys were using programs to hunt for nothing but gold and silver, my finds were things no detectorist would leave in the ground if he came across them. Money’s still money, even if it is only chump change that helps pay for your batteries every month.

Did the previous detectorists dig anything of great value from their holes? Maybe, maybe not. I usually don’t think about these things, nor did I ask the lifeguard guy because people tend to lie like rugs, both in their favor and otherwise. After all, you never know who’s going to ambush you in the parking lot and bop you over the head for that gold engagement ring with the half-karat diamond because you told him you found one, so it stands to reason that not many of us tell the world what we've found on any given day. If my detecting compatriots did find valuables, more power to them because the early birds not only get the worms, but they usually get the better worms. I’m not a morning person, so that’s just a fact of detecting life I live with.

However, the early birds don’t get all the worms, especially since this world is chock full of guys who have sloppy detecting habits. Bad habits on land mean bad habits in the water, too. Coupled with the fact that no expanse of land greater than a few feet in diameter can truly be hunted out, there are just too many variables involved in shallow water hunting that indeed make it possible for there to be enough findables to go around, no matter what time of day you prefer to hunt. There will certainly be fewer goodies if you’re not a morning person, so you’ve just got to be a better hunter.

Some of these variables are naturally occurring nature’s little gift to the hunting community variables; some are of our own making. Here’s a few ways to increase your odds of having a successful water hunt, especially if you’re walking in the footsteps -- and the holes -- of those who were there just a few hours before you:

Stay on line
Unlike detecting on land, it’s totally impossible to walk a straight line in the water. If you tried, and at the same time someone was filming you trying to do it, you'd end up looking like Moe, Larry or Curly. This is why it’s equally impossible for anyone to scrub the shallows thoroughly, no matter how good of a detectorist they may be. Much of this trouble centers around having to continually look down at a featureless sheet of water. Some detectorists try walking toward a point on a distant shoreline, but this works out about as well as driving to Albequerque by keeping you car pointed at a particular star in the sky. Ancient sailors tried using this sort of land-point navigation system for centuries until they got tired of ending up either lost or shark food and invented the sextant.

Here’s a way to keep yourself reasonably on line while working the shallows. It’s certainly not foolproof, but it’s better than using a land point. If you’re using a long-handled sand scoop, let the basket scrape the sand bottom next to you as you walk. Keep the handle pointed straight in front of you with the pole an inch or so away from your thigh as you walk. Imagine yourself steering the rudder of a rickety old boat (with the handle of your scoop as the rudder handle) and you’ll get the picture. If you start veering off to the side in either direction, you’ll either have too much space between your thigh and the handle, or you’ll start walking into the handle.

Work slowly and thoroughly
The reason most of us leave the good stuff still lying in the ground is not because our detectors suck, but rather because we’re just moving too damn fast. Unless you’re scheduled to perform lifesaving neurosurgery in an hour, slow your butt down. And once you slow down, slow down some more. When you’re following up other water hunters, you really have to make sure you’re overlapping your coil sweeps. Most of all, walk very slowly. When I want to really clean up after everyone else, I replicate that silly little march the wedding party uses to walk down the church aisle. Take a baby step, stop, and sweep. Baby step, stop, sweep. Incidentally, this is how old guys using cheap detectors still come up with silver to this very day while the rest of us go home with pocket lint and stinkin’ Lincolns.

Narrow your sweep area
To increase your thoroughness, narrow your swing radius. Instead of sweeping your coil in a wide arc in front of you, narrow your sweep area to no wider than the width between your shoulders. It’ll take you longer to cover an area, but you won’t be missing anything.

Get your mind right, boss
Last but not least, if someone tells you other detectorists were there before you, or if you see other detectorists working the beach, don’t let if faze you one bit. Much of the reason why our hunts don’t meet our expectations is because we’re too tired, too hungry, too hot, too cold, too achy, too bothered by bugs, or too just pissed off about something or other in general to hunt as well as we otherwise could. In other words, we are our own worst enemy, not the other guy working another patch of the same site ahead of us. Many of us automatically assume that just because someone else has gotten there first, that person has already cleaned the place out.

If you want to keep your mind right, do as I do and assume that everyone who has been there before you are the worst detectorists in the world. For good measure, I also assume these people are either using machines that made in some Communist bloc country in 1969 or purchased for $65 from a Damark catalog. With guys like that hunting before you (and with you hunting smarter and slower), there’s no way you’ll go home empty-handed.

© 1999 Scott Buckner

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

see also:

reading the beach
water hunting with the explorer
who dares wins
water 3




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