What am I doing Wrong?

Intro: 

Hey Everybody. Welcome! To Episode 51 of the metal detecting show podcast. My Name is Ciaran and I have been Metal Detecting for nearly 30 Years. This week I want to talk about what to do when things are not working out for you or at least you think are not working out for you.

Music

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Content:

Hi All 

I hope you’ve had a great week full of prosperous and historic hunts. Were in windy season here in Ireland so available hunting time was zero however I gave that time over to driving about looking for potential locations to hunt and logging the location to check later on the relevant databases to confirm whether I can hunt there our not. 

As soon as restrictions lift ill be beating down doors looking for permissionns. I got some great news this week when digitwithwill messaged me to tell me I just won a Equinox 600 on the Detectival draw on youtube last weekend and sure enough I had wahooo so watch this space as I feel a giveaway is in order. 

I also received some great feedback from Kase on Speak pipe check it out.

Thanks Kase I really appreciate the feed back and im glad to hear word of mouth is starting to spread the podcast so thanks again Kase and hopefully you can get out and Happy hunting. 

So This week I want to chat to about what to do when despite all your efforts your hunting is not paying off. I see a lot of answers to this question online and inenevitably the advice comes get a better detector just stick with it on and on but what can someone do with that advice nothing really.

So this week I want to address this very question What am I doing Wrong I have found nothing Im at my wits end and im about to pack it all in.

So firstly how do you know you are doing rubbbish are you measureing your success off what you see posted online on instagram or youtube, well let me be the one to break it to you this is not an accurate representation of what returns you should be getting this is what it looks like through rose tinted glasses, look at any of these accounts and you will soon see they are presenting the Cream now some accounts are upfront and acknowledge it for example you hear some hunters saying that they have dug 500 holes today and this is the best of the lot that’s accurate but if you see a picture of a gold coin on instagram there is no context to the amount of work required or luck taken to find that. 

So my first bit of advise is set your expection correctly and realistically. Ill let you in on a little secret I havnt found a silver coin in years but I have only been hunting beaches so I set my expectation that I will not find any silver coins on a beach unless very lucky. 

My expectation is I will find something good 1 in 10 finds something great in 1 in 100 finds and something amazing once in a life so if I have a few good finds per hunt im happy but every few hunts I find something great which keeps you going.

Expectation is also about what you want to hunt for or what cool stuff you want to find. your cool stuff does not match my cool stuff. I love finding worthless toy cars on the beach other people will bin them. 

So if your feeling unsucessful take a moment to assess whether you have your expectations and perceptions aligned to what cool stuff you want to find.

Ok that’s the mental aspect taken care of but what about the advise to upgrade your detector that will fix your problem well I don’t agree with that really, if you have lost thrust in your detector then upgrade it. 

For example I was hunting with my first detector that would behave irratically and intermittantly stop alerting to a find.

it took me about a year to realise this but at this point my thrust in the detector was zero I sent it off to be repaired which it was and the improvement was remarkable however the thrust was gone resulting in me upgrading fairly soon after but then I had to start the cycle of learning my new detector all over again more on that in a second but consider are you asking too much from your detector it is correct that an entry level detector or especially a knock off of one will not perform like an intermediate or genuine model. 

The best you can hope for is a somewhat functional descrimination program but forget about accurate repeatable target identification so if your only focusing on what the VDI is telling you and only digging specific ID’s then your not going to have a good time and like me thrust will slowly errode away.

Experience plays a huge part if your only starting out or in the first year or two hunting then your expereince in reading and handling a detector can have a negative impact for example even expereinced detectorists will have a learning curve everytime they change or upgrade detectors if your only starting out this learning curve will be a slow climb till you get to the top but even expereinced detectorists can take years to fully know there currrent detectors.  If your like me and tend to learn by doing your learning will be protracted im still learning my 8 year old CTX never mind my equinox but if you focus on learning and understanding every feature of your detector you will have a great start to fully understanding your machine but this takes time.

So spend some time learning your machine.

Experience also relates to actually knowing what you find is good are you able to identify the find and know its something great another example and a mistake I made because I didn’t expect it on a hunt a few years ago I found a 3 ring millie ball on a beach I was delighted but that day I found a load of sinkers and lumps of lead which I chucked into my lead bucket it didn’t hit me to double check the lead for any other millie balls. 

This identified millie ball sat in my office for a good 6 months being showed off to anybody who was interested to ask. It was only when I found another lump of lead on the same beach that I noticed that the new find had what looked like 3 rings flattened out it was then that I cottoned on that this was a deformed from impact millie ball I adjusted my search focusing on lead and found anther one that day bringing my total to 3 however when I went home with this new information I searched my lead ile only to find 2 more. If I hadnt of put two and two together I would have melted these down as random lead. I didn’t expect it so I wasn’t on the look out for it so I though what I had was rubbish.

This happens all the time and is one of the reasons that meuseums don’t like metal detectorist they are worried we will find something great and not know what it is and destroy. Check all your coins for silver check everything if your not sure pop a pic online someone will know what it is but educate yourself along the way there is nothing like finding something your not sure about only to find out its great.

OK on to time to Hunt you have to put some miles on that detector just going out for an hour here and there will not help you learn but it will not help you get ground coverage for example let do the maths quickly. Say you dig 15 holes an hour but you only go out for 2 hours a week that about 30 finds both good and bad but using my expectation above as an example that will give me 3 good finds a week and a great find every month or so however say you go out for 4 hours twice a week that 120 holes a week or 12 good finds and maybe 1 great find. This is total finger in the air stuff but I think you get the idea. You need to put in the effort and miles walked to get ground coverage to find the good finds or at least a chace to.

Finally and most improtantly its all about location ived covered this previously several time’s but if metal detecting as a hobby is like an iceberg the actual hunting is the the tip of the iceeberg that sits above the water where the research is the huge part of the iceberg that’s under the water. 

Research research research location location location. If you are unsucessful the most probable reason is you havnt done your research on the location your hunting. There is no point in hunting a field just because you got permission on it theer has to have been a reason for people to have been on it at some stage and your job is to figure that out.

So if you find your self asking the question what am I doing wrong ask your self the following first.

do you have realistic expectations 

do you have any reason to not trust your equipment

have you spent enough time learning your equipment.

Do you know what everything is that you have found are you sure you havnt already found something great.

And finally Location Location location have you spent some time reserching your location

Random hunts equals random finds and success is total reliant on random luck

Wrap Up 

That’s it for this week’s I hope you liked this episode of the metal detecting show podcast.

Check out our website www.themetaldetectingshow.com for this episode show notes. 

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If you like this content and would like more please don’t hesitate to tell your friends and don’t forget to hit that subscribe button.

Once again, I hope you have enjoyed this episode and we will chat to you all again next week. 

Get out there eyes down and Happy Hunting.