Finding a Target

Do not forget to use the audio or visual discrimination capabilities of the detector. If you locate a target, get down with a small plastic gold pan and start with the fastidious work of getting the target off of the ground and into the gold pan. If the detector you are using does not have a discriminator or a target identifier, then you will need to dig out all the targets if you are interested in getting all the gold you can. After a certain amount of time, some prospectors have said they are able to tell the difference between the iron and non iron sounds. It almost seems as if gold nuggets have a softer sound but a shaper peak to them whereas the iron targets have a flatter peak to them and are have a harder sound as well. Being able to trace the size of a gold nugget is also a hint; however there are some nuggets that can be very big and it would be a shame to pass these up. In a non motion all metal mode, the prospector can in addition try the trick of trying to figure out big an area of the loop is sensitive to the target. For instance, a non iron target is in most cases only detected inside of the diameter of the loop, meaning the area should not be any wider than the actual loop, whereas an iron target is in most cases detected very past the edges of a loop. If the detector the prospector is using does not have a discriminator, he will need to learn how to interpret targets. If the detector does not have a discriminator it is essential to learn its boundaries. When a prospector is trying to discriminate, he will need to dig all of the targets that are of brass, copper, lead, aluminum and silver because the detector will point them as possibly being gold. The only one that can be eliminated is and ignored is iron. Keep in mind also that there are not any discriminators that are one hundred percent reliable. There are a diverse number of factors that play together and that could be placed together to confuse the prospector such as the size of the target, the depth and the amount of mineralization there is in the ground. Keep in mind that a little bit of practice can make the difference and help the prospector learn to identify iron in a very accurate way. It is important to define what is more valuable; losing some smaller pieces of gold to that of digging out tons of nails and debris that have some smaller pieces of gold in it. In most cases, almost all prospectors agree that if the ground is highly mineralized, they should dig through all of the targets just in case.