Tips for Beginners in Treasure Hunting with a Metal Detector
- Get ready to be a trash man. You’re going to pick up a lot of junk along the way, so be prepared to pass a lot of bottle caps, trash, and pennies but be patient, don’t give up. Keep hunting.
- Purchase the best detector you know you can afford, but do not go above your budget. Do not bend when it comes to quality. If you slack in the beginning that means you will spend more in the future.
- Be persistent. When you use your first metal detector, the more you will search, the more you will find, the veterans in this hobby became veterans by being persistent and the more you search, the more you get closer to huge find.
- Avoid places with a high influx of people. We’re not saying don’t interact with the locals or talk to people from time to time. But it’s best to avoid places where people gather a lot because you will spend more time talking, explain and showing people what your hobby is rather than actually finding treasure.
- Look for a local hotspot if you want to go relic hunting. Visit the library, talk to the local historians in your area, visit the city hall, and find out about old hotspots in the area and you can start searching there.
- Start in your own lawn. Don’t go straight into the big leagues, start behind your home, learn the basics, it should help you get the hang of your metal detector, it will help get you used to the settings and understand what will work best for you.
- Dig everywhere and everything. When you start newly, it is almost impossible to know if that signal is a piece of a car or treasure, so dig up everything. You don’t want to miss a really good find.
- Respect people and property. Make sure you always cover up the holes you dig up and be respectful to people’s land and their wishes, if someone says no, then it is no. You don’t want to get kicked off your favorite dig site and hear someone finds a treasure there the next day.
- Hunt after it rains. This helps your searching and even digging, searching because it improves conductivity and digging because the ground is soft and great for digging.
- Rotate the spots you hunt. If you didn’t find something in a particular area today, I would recommend that you dig in another spot the next day. Come back after a few months or after a year, switch it up, search here and there, plan your search depending on your find.
- Overlap your seeps a little. When you are using your detector, move it a seeping motion; make sure it overlaps so that you don’t miss any potential treasure.
- Be nice to strangers. Yes, I know it sounds weird, but you will have to be nice to strangers because people will give you looks wondering what you’re doing, especially if you’re hunting in busy areas. But smile, be polite and move on. If you can avoid them, it’s great, but if not, keep your head down and keep moving.
- Take a sack along. Always go along with a bag to collect the things you find from your day. Even if you dig up garbage, take it along with you. That is one less signal to worry about, and you’d be doing the next guy a favor.
- Hunt early in the day or later in the evening. As with people again, it is best to hunt when people aren’t very active, or having someone trying to rob you. Some opt for hunting at night, but be careful – you could get jumped by someone who thinks you have a lot of valuables.
- Keep the coils flat over the ground. Certain times we tend to lift the coil by accident when we sweep, do be careful not to do this, you end up missing potential targets.
- Also, slow down. Moving too fast could make you lose something spectacular during your search.
- Make sure you sweep the surface thoroughly before you start digging. If you heard a double signal check to be sure, then sweep again. Clear the top layer of first or grass, then sweep again. If there’s no sound this time, out was probably a little piece of metal or mineralization.
- Don’t ignore faint sounds or signals. One thing that beginners usually do is they only dig when they have a strong signal which shouldn’t be so. Dig it up, the treasure could be deeper.
- Get comfortable headphones. You’re going to be wearing them for quite some time so it is best to get ones that don’t leave your ears irritated and itchy.
- Often one treasure means there’s a second. If you find something special, then keeping digging, chances are there’s more where that came from. You could find some great stuff in the same area.
- Keep records of the things you find. Every time you go on a hunt out is a good habit to keep a record of the things you found and where you found them. This will help you when you want to plan your routes and rotate them.
- Go to the beach. The beach is one of the best places to go hunting because it is constantly replenished, and people constantly come there, and they lose their valuables.
- Talk to other metal detector hobbyists. Veterans usually have tips and the finer details of the trade. Some areas even have metal detector meetings you can join.
- Use smaller coils in places covered with trash covered areas. This will help with discrimination. Use a coil that is not bigger than six inches for the best results.
- Detect during the springtime. This is the best time to go detecting because winter is gone, it’s no longer freezing, and anything that is left will be close to the surface.
