5/30/15 Alternative Recovery Techniques For Special Situations.

Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.

Some guys carefully grid every inch of an area.  Other guys wander around randomly.  Some believe that they have a sense for where things might be.  Some believe in a sixth sense.  You might call it insight or intuition or ESP.  They feel drawn to finds.  Some believe in various forms of dowsing.

Where you stand on these things might have something to do with how you've been doing lately.  It is hard to believe in a sixth sense when you are in a dry spell and can't make a find to save your life.  Maybe you just wonder what happened to your ESP.

For everybody there are hot spells and dry spells.  The more you become accustomed to finding a lot, the less it takes to feel like you are in a dry spell.  When you become accustomed to a lot of finds, any pause or break can be perceived as a dry spell.  Everything is relative.

As you increase your skill and finds, you expect more.   Your standards increase.  You are less easily satisfied.  Even though you might find ten times as much as you did ten years ago, it doesn't seem like you're finding anything anymore - at least not anything that impresses you much.

That is good in some ways.  It pushes you to work harder, more intelligently and be more productive.  But don't let that take the fun out of it for you.

When you hit a dry spell, and you will to one degree or another as conditions change or areas are hunted out, that is an opportunity.  It is an opportunity to make some changes and explore.  It might push you to get a new detector, which is seldom the solution but can be beneficial, or explore new areas, do some research or learn new things.

One thing you should know is that there is always more to be found.  There are always other places to hunt.  There are always new treasures to seek.  There is always a lot to learn.

The key is patience.  Turn that dry spell into something positive.  Think about other ways to approach the problem.  Redefine the problem.  What is it you really want to do?  Break down old barriers and habits.

I'll give you one small example showing what I mean about making a change and doing thing differently.  Lets say you are detecting and come across a dense hole of targets.  It seems there is a target of some sort on every square inch.  Your meter is going crazy. You are having trouble pinpointing because there are so many targets and they are so close together.  What would you do?

If you are stuck in a habit you might try as hard as you can to dig each target separately like you normally would.  But let me ask you a question.  Is there another better way?  Why try to pinpoint and dig each target separately in this situation?  Why not just dig the entire area and then sift?   A sifter might work better than a scoop in that situation.  Or a dredge, if that is practical in that situation.

The tendency is to treat situations the same even when there might be a better alternative.

Have you ever heard of the Merkitch sifter?  It is a sifter with two large wheels that you pull through the sand to sift the top few inches.  That is an alternative to detecting.  It is a heck of a lot of work, but it works, and in some situations is more effective than using a detector and scoop.

I have one very large scoop that can be fitted with a 30 foot pole.  It provides another alternative for working dense or high probability holes in creeks, rivers or lakes.

When I recenly watched a video of a fellow trying to detect individual targets in a creek at a spot that was covered with junk as well as some good targets, I wondered why he didn't just sweep the top inch or so of cover (there was only an inch or so over bedrock) and sift it out.  It would have been a lot quicker than trying to pinpoint each and every target and pick them up one at a time.  There were a lot of things going for sifting.  One was running water.  Another was little soil cover.

If you've ever used anything like a Merkitch sifter, you know how quick it is to visually spot targets in a sifter even if there are a lot of junk targets.  It is almost like laying them out on a table.  Sifting can be especially good for situation when there are either a lot of good targets, or a lot of good and junk targets.

You probably know some places that are too junky to detect.  They might be covered with pull tabs, nails or whatever.  It might be worth sifting sites like that.

My main point today is that different situations call for different solutions.  When you are in a dry spell, that dry spell might be just the right time to do some thinking about alternate approaches.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net