Metal Detector

[Tom Herman]

Don,

All good advice... I detected back in the Before Time in the mid '70's with an old Treasure Hawk: It was incapable of telling the difference between various metals and hot rocks: You wound up digging EVERYTHING, and that got old FAST.
Fast forward 30 years, and I bought a White's DFX, top of the line 10 years ago, and still pretty good.
The DFX has all sorts of cool features: There is a bar graph that goes from about -95 to +95... Anything under "0" is ferrous, and as you get to the top end (over 70), you start getting into bronze/copper/silver.
Certain strong hits on the bar graph, like good, solid 26's and 84's are usually nickles and quarters respectively. If the display is ragged and scattered, it may be junk, or oxidized metal.
Never found any coin silver with it (although a fair amount of sterling jewelry), but I did jackpot a gold ring once on a soccer field. It showed up as a corroded Zink penny, so you can imagine my shock when I pulled out a gold ring!
The way it works, is that Gold and Aluminum have very similar signatures, so if you notch one out, you'll loose the ability to find the other.
You can tailor the settings on the DFX to pass/reject almost anything you want.
There are canned programs already in it that will do well for you.
I will also concur with having a pinpointer: You will go mad if you don't have one. They save you a lot of time finding the item when you have narrowed it down to a small area.
Basically, you'll get what you pay for: Buy a cheap detector, and you'll wind up with less performance that a better one. Don't worry so much about the brand as the features. The DFX does have two different frequencies it can use, so you can fine tune it for gold or other metals.
With all of your investments in fine rifles, I imagine spending a grand on a decent detector shouldn't be an issue.
Don't expect to get rich. My unit didn't even pay for the batteries. Fortunately, I have an almost endless source of used "AA" batteries, so I've had to only buy 9 volters for the pinpointers.
Last year, I metal detected the McLaughlin Massacre site on my R & R day between fires, found a crapload of shell casings and a few bullets, but no period musket balls.
Also jackpotted a couple of rattlesnakes, so I left while the getting was good.

[Kurt]

Kurt...wish I'd had this thing when I was a kid in CA 30 miles from miles and miles of tailings!!

Gussy with all the fires in CA, if they ever get a rain of any amount the mud slides will open more fine pickings

[Don McDowell]

Lots of good info fella's, keep it coming.
Price isn't to much of an issue, altho I see Cabela's has one for 2900 that I might not quite see the value in...

[Tom Herman]

Lots of good info fella's, keep it coming.
Price isn't to much of an issue, altho I see Cabela's has one for 2900 that I might not quite see the value in...

Don, Cabela's has a lot of items with huge price tags that can be bought cheaper elsewhere.... It's a nice place to visit, but unless the value is there, I simply won't buy from them. ONCE I went in and found several single shot rifles reasonable, but didn't have the money and have never seen values like that since. Now they want $1100 for a Trapdoor Springfield that looks like it came off the bottom of a pond... ****No Sale****

[Don McDowell]

I buy a lot of stuff from Cabela's. Mostly reloading equipment/components as many times they're actually the cheapest place to get things. Did a price comparison between Cabela's and Walmart on some fishing stuff once... Over paid when I passed on the very same lure at Cabela's and waited until we got to Wally World...
Have bought a few guns from them at decent price , Carols Winchester bpcr came out of the Sidney Gun Library for a good bit less than the same rifle could be found anywhere else, and still haven't seen one for the price we paid that day.
I have seen some stuff in that Gun Library that was seriously over priced tho, but for the most part the on the floor inventory is about where it is everywhere else.

[Cody Smith]

This is where I have bought most of my stuff. Good prices and lots of good reading and help. There are also knowledgeable folks on the other end of a phone you can talk to.

http://www.kellycodetectors.com/

[Don McDowell]

Thanks Cody , will check them out.

[Gussy]

Kurt...wish I'd had this thing when I was a kid in CA 30 miles from miles and miles of tailings!!

Gussy with all the fires in CA, if they ever get a rain of any amount the mud slides will open more fine pickings

There's a 6+lb nugget from those tailings in the Whites manual. He got over $400,000 for it!!!

[Kurt]

Gussy there are some good piles in Wyoming on Rock Creek where the Mormon was buried. The only problem is the DNR wont let you dig in those tailing piles because of the mercury used back then.

[Tom Herman]

Gussy there are some good piles in Wyoming on Rock Creek where the Mormon was buried. The only problem is the DNR wont let you dig in those tailing piles because of the mercury used back then.

That's unfortunate! Mercury is only a problem when it enters the food chain... I would think that they WANT people finding and recovering it... I knew a fellow that collected Gold back East in the Carolinas: He would regularly dredge, and look down and see his face in a Mercury mirror pool in the stream beds. Mercury recovered, problem gone.
When they dredged Suak Creek (?) over near Blewitt Pass, they didn't bother figuring out how to hold onto monster nuggets, so all the biggies went over the side...